The City of Fresno is considering a measure to ban homeless encampments. And it's kind of interesting how this has come to be. And it seems as though there's a tidal wave breaking on the left in California as well as the right. And it took a Supreme Court decision to sort of allow this allow this almost to become acceptable. A Supreme Court decision and Gavin Newsom, so, let me explain what's going on.
So you've got the.
City of Fresno. City of Fresno is proposing an ordinance, an ordinance that'll be enforced by the City Attorney's office. So they're not going to put this on the County DA's office, which I think is smart. The DA's office, I think has so many and so much worse crimes to prosecute that this is probably not something that's wise to sort of place in their lap, although it looks like the county might take up a measure like this. Also, a county supervisor, Steve ran Out, says he was considering
an ordinance like this. Basically, the measure would impose up to a year in jail and up to a one thousand dollars fine for persons engaged in camping in public places. So public places include, but are not limited to, sidewalks, streets, alleyways, or other public spaces, city property, et cetera. So to get rid of homeless encampments, now the knee jerk. I don't want to get either of the two knee jerks.
I think there's a conservative knee jerk that I have always been a little uncomfortable about with when dealing with the homeless. And I think there are some conservatives who might say that I'm soft or whatever, but whatever, I don't care. These are human beings. These are human beings, yes, who are making bad choices. But I feel like I can't sit in church every Sunday and hear about, you know, loving your neighbor, loving the poor, and take an attitude of well, not these poor people.
I don't know.
I get the sense that there are a lot of folks today, or some folks today, who take this attitude. Well, no, the poor people Jesus was talking about in his time, they were all like, it wasn't their fault they were poor. They were like good poor people, not these poor people, and which I just think is naive. There's no such thing as a good poor person or a there's no such thing as a good rich Perton. We're all sinners,
all right. And I doubt that every single poor person who was poor in the time of Christ was this richly virtuous person who had just fallen on hard luck. Now, certainly there have our examples of Sometimes, yes, people are poor by virtue of they're down on their luck and they've had tough circumstances and it's really not their fault. Sometimes people are poor because it is their fault, because they have made poor choices, and on a certain level
that doesn't matter. We're supposed to love and care for all of them. So I don't want to have a knee jerk reaction of not caring about the person. And what I would say, looking at this ordinance and how the city intends to use it to enforce it, I don't think that's the approach that's being taken by the
city as best as I can see. So the things that I think is interesting is the group of city council members who are supporting this, the mayor is supporting this, and then at his press conference about it, you've got, you know, stalwart of the right. Gary Brettefeld standing right next to the mayor. On the other side, you've got stalwart of the left, Miguel Arrius, and you've got Tyler Maxwell.
So pretty much that runs the gamut of the ideological spectrum on the city council, left, right, and center, and all of them are supportive of this measure. Now, Maxwell's comments about it, I think are illustrative. Maxwell said, what this ordinance will allow us to do is clear the large encampments building up in front of your children's schools, your neighborhood parks, to local bus stops, and in front of our chais's small businesses. We want to help the homeless, truly,
we do. We have tried our hardest the these last four years I've been on the city Council, added Maxwell, referring to the renovation of Rundown motels into emergency shelters or transitional housing, meals, showers, bus rides, and other services. We're here to help you if you want that help, Maxwell said. If you don't want the city's help, that's okay too, But I hope you find that help somewhere else.
Because our school's parks and businesses are off limits. Any individual charge with violation of this article in lieu of being taken to jail, may at the election of the siding officer, and with the consent of the individual, be taken to a place that provides social services, including mental health, housing or substance abuse treatment. So the point is, anyone who's being arrested for this, it's up to them if
they want to get prosecuted or not. The options are get to services to help you, and if you don't, then we will prosecute you. But basically, I think that the problem is these resources are available and people aren't availing themselves of it. And maybe that's because they've got an addiction and they don't want the help that's available.
But I think this is at a certain point there's a kind of tough love that has to be exercised, and I don't think it's loving to let people just continue to live in encampments when we were spending all this money on services to help the homeless and they're just not availing themselves of it. The posture that Andrew Jans is taking the city attorney, I think is also good. Let me read some of the quotes from Jans. So the one thousand dollars fine or the one year in
jail penalties. So basically this is a miss These are misdemeanor crimes that people will be charged with. Okay, So the definition of a misdemeanor for those who don't know what's what's the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor. We hear those words all the time, and I think people have a sense of oh, felony means it's serious, and misdemeanor means it's not. A felony just means a
crime that's punishable by a year plus in jail. A misdemeanor means a crime that's punishable by less than a year. So all these so the penalties for violating this homeless encampment order is thousand dollars fine up to a year in jail. So clearly they're structuring this as this is a misdemeanor. So one thousand dollars fine or a year in jail are the maximum that a judge can impose or that a prosecutor can ask for. Andrew Jans said,
so Jan's had this quote. I'm directing my prosecution team and even though the actually let me back up, so most of the time, crimes are enforced by the district Attorney. And the district attorney is a county wide office, right, So Lisa smit Camp is the Fresno County District Attorney. Sally Moreno is the Maderra County District Attorney, and each of them are charged with prosecuting crimes that happen within their district, which in this case is just the county.
So Lisa smith Camp oversees criminal prosecution for crimes committed throughout the County of Fresno. So if it happens in Fresno, if it happens in Clovis, if it happens in Redley, any of these, if it happens in Sanger, all these crimes, if they happen within Fresno County, Lisa smith Camp oversees it. Now, the interesting thing about this ordinance is that it's going to be enforced by the city attorney of the City of Fresno. This is only applying to the City of Fresno.
And I think the reason why is because the district attorney, she's overseeing criminal law enforcement for all kinds of crimes, most of which are a lot more serious, you know, not to say homeleost encampments aren't disruptive to people or businesses or what have you. But frankly, if the district attorney's office has a limited amount of time and resources at its disposal, they only have X number of attorneys.
They have a lot of attorneys, but they only have X number of attorneys with X many hours of daytime. And I think often when measures like this get dumped into the lap of the district attorney, they're prosecutors are so busy charging people with gang related offenses and murders and theft, and you know this that and the DUIs and this that and the other, that something like a homeless encampment prosecution is a misdemeanor. Homeless encampment prosecution is
just not going to be priority A number one. And maybe you'll have a prosecutor who's more willing to, you know, plea, bargain this out and get this case out of the way. So what's happening here is enforcement of this measure is going to be undertaken by the city attorney and the city attorney's office. Now, usually the city attorney's office isn't so much concerned with the broad range of criminal law enforcement so they can expend more time, more energy on
something like this than the DA's office can. And obviously the district attorney is overseeing the whole County of Fresno.
Which includes the hire city of Fresno.
The City Attorney's office is just going to be focused on Fresno. Okay, So this is just the city Attorney's office for the City of Fresno. If there's a holmost encampment in Clovis, they're not going to be able to prosecute anything with it. So Andrew Jans said, the City Attorney for Fresno. Andrew Jans said, quote, I'm directing my prosecution team to make sure we don't engage in any type of plea bargaining when it comes to these types of cases. We're going to demand accountability on all of
these cases. Jan said, if you accept services, if you accept help in the criminal justice system, then we're going to go that route. But he added that his attorneys will seek maximum sentences from judges and juries for those who refuse help. And honestly, I think that's a good approach.
I honestly think that's a really good approach. If we have these services available and we've expended so much money at the state level, at the city level to help people, then maybe police involvement, maybe criminal justice involvement can become helpful. Maybe this is the way to transition people out of this cycle I think often of drugs and then homelessness.
So Dyer sort of capped this off by saying, the hope is that the judge in any case will offer that individual, the homeless individual treatment in lieu of jail time, and our hope is that they will take advantage of that. If not, then there are going to be criminal justice system consequences. Now, when we return, I want to talk about the Supreme Court case that allowed the City of Fresno to take this step and the Ninth Circuit decisions that had held it up. That's next on the John
Girardi Show. The reason the City of Fresno is able to promote these this new measure that's been introduced to the city Council. It's being supported as of now, supported by Mayor Dyer, by council members Brettefeld, Arius and Maxwell, and I'm guessing other council members support it. Those are just the people who were at the Those are just
the people who were at the press conference. I mean if if both mc if both Miguel Arius and Gary Brettefeld support it, who are pretty much at the polar opposite ends of the ideological spectrum of the city council. If both of them support it, I'm guessing pretty much everyone in the middle supports it too, So I would expect that this is likely to pass. How did this
come to be? Why now, all of a sudden do we see Why now, all of a sudden do we see Gavin Newsom promoting issuing this executive order urging people to clear homeless encampments. Why do we see the city of Fresno.
Moving in this way?
Well, it's because of a recent Supreme Court decision that just came down a few weeks ago that was looking at a similar kind of law that was passed in the city of Boise, Idaho. Now, why do we what
were we doing waiting on something that happened in Boise, Idaho? Well, Idaho and the federal district courts in Idaho, they are under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Federal Circuit Court, the Federal Appeals court that hears all of the appeals from the federal courts in Idaho, but also California and Washington and Oregon and Arizona and Nevada and Montana and Alaska and Hawaii and Guam, so the ninths and maybe some other states that I missed.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is an appeals court. They hear appeals from all the decisions made by district court judges in all of those states, and they are making decisions about federal law the interpretation of federal law as it applies in that region of the country. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is far and away the largest of all the circuit courts as far as the
number of people who live within its jurisdiction. The Ninth Circuit is also, and has been for a long time, notoriously the most liberal of all the federal circuit courts. In fact, one of the great accomplishments of the Trump administration for his first term was making the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, taking it from being the most whacked out, radically liberal court in human history to being just moderately liberal. Underrated.
What an enormous accomplishment that was during the Trump years by Trump and McConnell and Lindsay Graham and Chuck Grassley and all the guys in the Senate Judiciary Committee, all the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now so, Boise, Idaho is part of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the city of Boise had passed an ordinance like this one making homeless encampments illegal, and this was challenged
as a constitutional matter. Basically, people sued the City of Boise to say that this law, that this ordinance that the City of Bois had adopted banning homeless encampments, violated the Constitution of the United States of America. And basically they said that it violated the Eighth Amendment. The Eighth
Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. The argument goes that if you don't have enough beds for the homeless to stay in, if you don't have enough social services available within your city to allow the homeless.
To get a place to sleep, it.
Is cruel and unusual punishment to penalize someone for the state of being homeless. That that is a cruel and unusual form of punishment. The Supreme Court got to hear. Now, so let's let's take a step back. The Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals agreed with this argument. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with this argument and said that it was in fact cruel and unusual punishment, that if a city has x number of homeless and doesn't have that many beds, that therefore it's cruel and unusual punishment to penalize someone for the state of being homeless.
Now, I think that this is probably wrong on a couple of levels.
First, I think, okay, so there are three thousand homeless people. I don't think you need to have three thousand and one beds before you characterize homeless encampments as illegal, just as a fairness, Just as a question of fairness, It's not like the first night you arrest all three thousand people or something like that, that that's not what's going to happen. A city can have a plan for how you enforce this in a way that can transition to
population away from homelessness and living in an encampment. The fact that it is illegal can provide people with an incentive to get off the street. I don't think as a policy question, I don't think there's a fundamentally evil thing involved with making homelessness illegal when you don't quite have that precise number of sheltered beds.
Okay, But secondly, I.
Think the argument that it's cruel and unusual punishment is very hard to sustain if you have the approach of what were the framers of the Constitution saying?
By cruel and unusual punishment?
All right, Well, what the frames of the Constitution meant was, we're not going to torture people to death by you know, having them hung, drawn and quartered. You know, we're not going to you know, pull their intestines out in front of their eyes and you know, like, we're not going to engage in medieval forms of torture as a form of criminal punishment. We're not going to burn people alive
at the stake or you know, things like that. That's what the Eighth Amendment is about, saying that you might think that a certain form of punishment or penalizing certain kinds of conduct, you might think that it's unwise, you might think that it's bad policy, but it's not a thing that the Eighth Amendment is there to prevent against. The Eighth Amendment's goal is not to prohibit that kind of.
A regulation by a government.
So I think that's the argument the Supreme Court had, and I think it's a sensible argument. I don't think that's the kind of conduct the Eighth Amendment was designed to prevent. So because the Supreme now here's the problem. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that, yes, it is cruel and unusual punishment to outlaw homeless encampments when you don't have enough beds for them to stay in.
And because the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal said that for a case in Boise, Idaho, well that becomes the interpretation of federal law for all of the states that are under the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, including California. So after the Ninth Circuit issued that decision, California was stuck. California basically couldn't enforce any laws against
homeless encampments. Why because someone would challenge it and say, hey, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal Court of Appeals already ruled on this, this violates federal law. And the Ninth Circuit's decisions are binding for everyone who lives within California. So because of a decision emanating out of Boise, Idaho, but within the federal court system, California couldn't pass laws,
couldn't pass city or banning homeless encampments. However, now that the Supreme Court stepped in and said, nope, we're overturning what the Ninth Circuit said. This isn't cruel and unusual punishment.
Now, all of a sudden, Gavin.
Newsom can issue an executive order calling for the end of homeless encampments, and the City of Fresno can issue stuff and county supervisors can't. This Supreme Court decision has cleared the way.
So again, I.
Hope that these kinds of measures get enforced in a just way. I hope that there are actually services available for the homeless. I am inclined to trust the judgment of guys like Jerry Dyer and Tyler Maxwell and all of them that there are such services available, And I hope this can lead to a better situation in Fresno with homelessness, because it is a real problem. When we return, I want to just talk about some of the problems
with homelessness that even I've just experienced. That's next on John Jrardy show now that the City of Fresno is introducing an ordnance to ban homeless encampments, and this follows up from a Supreme Court decision overturning a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that basically cleared the way for city governments and state governments to pass measures like this. I want to talk a little bit about just my
own experience as a business manager. I'm run I'm executive director of a nonprofit and we have a business building in the city of Fresno. I just want to talk about my experiences with homelessness. So I'm not going to give I mean, I guess someone could just look up right to Life of Central California's address. It's not exactly secret, but you know, we our business is located near I'll
just say we're located near Blackstone in Ashland, Okay. So we have a lot of homeless people in the neighborhood. And the outside of my business the it's just an office building. Our office building used to belong to this
company that basically they the owner of the company. He basically he owned all the Wendy's in KFC franchises in Fresno, and the gentleman who owned it before he died, and this was about I think it was twenty plus years ago, he decided to donate his old management building to Rite to Life of Central California. So he completely I think at first he let us be there sort of as a tenant, and then he just gave us the building,
donated the building to us free and clear. So we own it and it's up it's on the street, and the part of our building that's against the street, there's sort of the wall of the building there and against the wall of the building there's like a garden bed with sort of brick on the outside. And the garden bed is about about three feet tall. I'd say it's right at the perfect height for someone who's walking by. They can just sit on it on this kind of
brick wall, and it's containing a big patch of dirt. Well, we can't really plant anything in the dirt because of all the passerby. Now, the problem is with having that garden bed with a little wall there that's like perfect for sitting on is that people sit on it constantly and it's shaded also, so people are constantly stopping by to sit there. And whether it's homeless people whoever it is. People are constantly coming by to sit there, and I
don't know that all of them are homeless necessarily. Like just yesterday, I had a big crowd of people who all had bicycles, all decided just to sit there all day and smoke weed. And I didn't even get the sense necessarily that they were homeless. They just seemed like, I don't know, maybe they were just ne'er do wells. I mean, it's not I mean, it's hard to stereotype and you can't tell just by looking at someone. But they weren't necessarily in like really raggedy clothing or anything.
They were just sitting around smoking weed. I've had times where people just sort of hang out there and they're literally gambling against the side of my building. They're like shooting dice. They're rolling dice for money against the side of the building. Now, we do often have homeless though who in camp there. And it's kind of I can't always see that outside wall of my building because of sort of it's the outside wall and I'm inside the building.
But there's a used car dealership that's kind of right across the street from us, who they look out, you know, their salesman or you know, hanging out in the parking lot as car salesmen do at a dealership, and they see everything. Oh yeah, people are peeing against the side of my building all the time. People are shooting up drugs against the side of my building all the time. I know because I see the needles. People are drinking
near my building all the time. I know because I see the little liquor bottles or beer bottles or beer cans or whatever that people are constantly. People are constantly leaving trash in this garden bed up against the side of my building. I remember one time. This is The other thing is maybe it's someone who has a car. There was a homeless man who was in a wheelchair and he had no legs. Okay, both of his legs were amputated below the knee, and he was going around
in a wheelchair. And I felt really bad for this guy. He had parked his car where he was clearly living out of his car, right in front of my business. And my business is kind of on a side street. It's off of Blackstone, So there was a part of me that was like, well, gosh, am I gonna call the cops on this guy, like, you know, where else does this guy have to go? Does this guy have anywhere else he can even go? Like, like, what are we doing here? Then I learned from people that he's
basically having a party on my sidewalk. I'm hearing from someone that he was who sees the guy that he's drinking and carousing and he's got girls over there hanging out right out against the side of my building. So which made me feel a little less sympathy for this gentleman. And again though, it's like I kind of call the city and I tell them, listen, I don't want this person to get arrested and go to jail, but can
you just get this person hooked up to services? And sometimes I think the city just feels sort of power had felt sort of powerless about this, Like they can offer for people stuff, but they weren't always able to force people to leave. So the kind of spotty responses I would get from the city led me to sort of give up and sort of not want to always
call them. Also, I'm running a nonprofit organization. I feel bad for these people on a certain level, Like I don't want to be known as like a heartless, cruel jerk towards the homeless. So, I mean, anytime I heard that people were actively doing illegal stuff, I would, you know, call the cops. But short of that, I mean, if someone's just sitting there, what am I supposed to do? And then people would bring I get more and more apparatus and stuff that they would just leave there. It
kind of came to a breaking point last November. So last November, one of the gals who works with me, my friend, she pulls into our parking lot and she sees a bunch of water coming out of We have kind of a courtyard area in the middle of our office building that you walk from our parking lot into the courtyard area, and she sees water flowing out of the courtyard into our parking lot.
She says, oh boy. She calls me.
I'm at the radio station or I forget where I was. She calls me and says, you need to get over here. So I come in. So a homeless person had managed to break into our I presume a homeless person. I'm not sure. And maybe you'll see what it is after I describe it. Someone had taken one of our large rolling garbage cans. That we leave in our parking lot. He had tipped it on its side and stood on it reached over the top of our large courtyard gate. We have a large locking courtyard gate that you can't
open without a key. He had managed to somehow reach over the top of it by standing on a large garbage can and whacked the inside pushbar lever to open the door of our courtyard. So he gets into our courtyard. Then he goes into the bathroom, which is accessible in the courtyard. You can access two bathrooms. He goes into one of the bathrooms. He proceeds. I'm saying, a he I don't know, Maybe I should be more open minded.
Maybe it was a female criminal. He proceeds to steal copper fixtures underneath the sink in the bathroom, which have to be I mean, it must be a big haul, you know, stealing copper like that. I mean, it's got to be worth two whole dollars. So he steals these copper fixtures under the sink, but he doesn't shut the water off for the sink, so he's take He's ripped the sink apart, all the plumbing under the sink, but he didn't shut off the water, so you've got water
now gushing out unabated. He also lights a fire in the bathroom. He lights it in the cabinet underneath the bathroom sink. It kind of in the same area where he was trying to steal the copper fitting. So I don't know what his order of operations was. He stealed the fittings and then the water came out, and then he lit the fire, or the light the fire first, and then he stole the cop I don't know. All I know is that this guy lit a fire in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, right next to the
water heater, So goodbye water heater. All of its wiring was completely fried. All this water is gushing out. This guy has made a royal mess. I mean, thank god, he put the fire out before the whole.
Building burned down. So he leaves.
And I show up at work. I don't know how many hours later. I don't know when he showed up. Maybe it was four o'clock or something. I show up at work to see all this flooding, fire damage, et cetera. So for the next month, basically I have to have contractors in there fixing things. Thank God, my insurance covered vandalism. But I mean, so you know we were out only you know, our five thousand dollars deductible as opposed to
you know, that would have cost us. He probably I think I remembered looking at the insurance claims and stuff. It cost us about twenty five thousand dollars worth of damage. All the water that had flooded from the bathroom to another room, to another room, to another room to another room, ruined a bunch of cabinets in one room that had to be completely ripped out and replaced. We had to then we had to retreat the flooring in the bathrooms
which the tiles had been adhered to. The tiles had been set, you know, decades ago, and the tiles had been adhered with asbestos. So we needed as bestis abatement. Like it was a nightmare. Then like two nights later, I see a bunch of burnt stuff right up against the building. Clearly this same Dufus came by the building and lit another fire. I don't know if he's just trying to warm himself. I mean it was in kind
of November. I don't know if he was just trying to warm himself, but he kept kept lighting fires on the street, and I've read more about fires and fire damage that's just being caused by homeless people, i think, just trying to get warm. So just my experience of homelessness just at my property. And by the way, I'm sure that I am not exceptional. I'm sure when we return, I want to talk about that. That my experience, I'm sure is far from unique. That's next on the John Girardi Show.
I'm encouraged that the city is taking steps to deal with homeless encampments. I hope that it is done in a fashion that is just and kind and equitable and fair to homeless people and in a way that genuinely
gets them help. And from everything i'm hearing from the city Attorney Andrew Jans, to the mayor, to the city council members, everything I'm hearing sounds good that the idea here is to get basically just to get these people to help, and if they refuse to get help, then that is the only point at which they will suffer consequences. We have help, we have help available to people, we have resources available to people. We need them to take
advantage of it. I hope it works, I guess I'm I desperately hope it works, because again, you know, I've seen the disruption that sort of our un checked homelessness has caused, Just just for my own business, where you know I have, I've constantly been having people just hanging out outside my building, people that I'm not always even
sure are really homeless. They might just be losers, ne'er do wells who are just sitting there, not because they actually don't have anywhere else to stay, but because they just want a place to hang around and smoke weed or drink or do drugs.
Or gamble.
So I've been you know, I'm tired of dealing with this at my business. I'm sure that you know. I remember that there's an old hospital that the county owns that they were thinking of selling where homeless people breaking into the hospital had caused a million dollars worth of damage. They were going to sell the property for like six million dollars, but they have a million dollars worth of repairs that they have to do because of the homeless breaking.
That's a huge loss for the county. So the costs that are accruing to businesses because of homelessness it's not negligible. So I hope that this is enforced in a way that is kind and fair to the people that it's targeting, towards the homeless themselves, and because you know, this is a real burden on the city and on taxpayers. So that'll do it for John Girardi Show. See you next time on Power Talk.