National group urges Turlock to stop homeless camp sweeps. Here’s what it recommends
A national legal group on Thursday urged the Turlock City Council to change its local homeless crisis strategy and comply with COVID-19 guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Instead of sweeping encampments and directing people to congregate shelters, the National Homelessness Law Center recommended Turlock apply for federal funding to provide individual housing at no local cost.
In a letter emailed to the council Thursday, the center’s legal director, Eric Tars, cited CDC guidance on unsheltered homelessness during the coronavirus pandemic. CDC guidance recommends local officials let people stay in encampments if individual housing options such as motel rooms are not available.
Clearing encampments without this option — as Turlock has done over the past two months — can increase the risk of infectious diseases spreading, per the CDC website. People may also scatter throughout the community and lose contact with service providers, the CDC said. Two Turlock nonprofit leaders told The Bee last month that some people evicted from encampments have hidden elsewhere on the streets instead of entering shelters.
“Rather than waste any more money conducting sweeps, Turlock owes it to its citizens, housed and unhoused alike, to exhaust every available funding channel and should use this opportunity to secure housing for people experiencing homelessness,” Tars wrote in the letter.
The city reported spending about $20,000 on cleanup crews for the sweeps of encampments on West Main Street near Planet Fitness and West Glenwood Avenue by the Travelodge. Turlock could alternatively put all encampment residents into hotel rooms and apply for full reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency through September, Tars said in a phone interview.
FEMA can fully reimburse local governments for providing non-congregate shelters during the pandemic until Sept. 30, 2021, according to a February press release. The agency awarded $1.5 million to the state of Vermont in March, reimbursing it for non-congregate shelter at a Holiday Inn, Motel 6 and other locations.
Homeless group offers to help Turlock
The center in the letter sincerely offered Turlock technical assistance to access resources such as the FEMA funding, Tars said. But if the city continues to violate public health guidance, he said the center is keeping its options open and has legal partners in California.
“Our goal is not to work in an adversarial manner with cities,” Tars told The Bee. “We really want to share these best practices that we know are actually going to meet their needs much better than these methods that they’ve been using in the past, which clearly haven’t ended homelessness.”
Based in Washington, D.C., the center has also contacted Oceanside in San Diego County and Medford, Oregon, in the past week to express concerns over encampment sweeps and a ban on unauthorized camping, Tars said. The center, which works to end and prevent homelessness, regularly sends cities such letters after seeing Google alerts. For the Turlock sweeps, Tars said the center learned about them by reading The Bee’s coverage.
Interim City Attorney George Petrulakis said he plans to follow up with Tars and has reviewed the legal group’s guidance in the past. The city is reviewing FEMA-related opportunities, but as of Friday, Petrulakis said he did not know whether staff have applied for reimbursements from the agency.
“The City appreciates the input from the NHLC in yesterday’s letter,” Petrulakis said in an email Friday. “They have provided an extensive list of resources that the City is evaluating. At first glance, much of it appears helpful as Turlock crafts its 24- to-36-month plan on our unsheltered residents.”
As of Friday, city spokesperson Maryn Pitt said the Taylor Court encampment sweep is scheduled for the week of May 10. The city is set to sweep its property May 12, but Pitt said other partners such as CalTrans and Union Pacific may sweep their properties on different days of the week.
The cleanup of Highway 99 and the railroad tracks between Taylor Road and Monte Vista Avenue will mark the city’s third sweep in its 120-day emergency. An estimated 18 people live there, Pitt said previously. The council ratified the local emergency March 16.
