Chico's Over It

Officers of the Chico Police Department after the Special Study Session Meeting, Tuesday, October, 22

The mood at the Special Session meeting at City Hall last Tuesday was that Chico isn’t having it anymore. A year ago the town seemed more divided over the issue, between those who wanted to offer services and those who wanted to lay the heavy hand of the law down on the growing problem of homelessness in Chico. At this point, the City doesn’t seem divided anymore.

As the sleeping bags piled up on the lawn outside of the building, and transients were seen handling drug paraphernalia behind the fountain in front of City Hall, the townspeople were crying out for action.

The passing of the controversial sit-lie ordinance seems imminent, and at this point, the citizens and the Council seem prepared to give the police whatever they need to get the job done.

A New Front on the War on Homelessness in Chico

          Council Member Sean Morgan at the Chico City Council meeting Tuesday, October 15, 2013

            The battle over the homeless raged on at the Chico City Council meeting last Tuesday. This particular conflict had to do with a church feeding the hungry.

            Orchard Church of Chico had been holding weekly barbecues for the needy in the Downtown City Plaza for over five years until a park ranger recently told them they needed a permit to continue.

            Pastor Jim Culp applied for the permit, which was approved by the Bidwell Park and Playground Commission for three months.

            Councilmember Sean Morgan was surprised when he read about the decision in the “Chico Enterprise Record.”

            “Given the transient issues we are faced with downtown -- a massive amount of emails, and phone calls, and personal comments and snail-mail that I think we’re all getting (on the Council) regarding these issues -- I was a little surprised that this didn’t find its way to (the) Council,” Morgan said. 

            Morgan then decided to appeal the permit so it would be put on the agenda for discussion at the next meeting, but was told that a Council member cannot appeal a decision once the Commission makes it.

            He then decided to file the appeal as a private citizen, but again was told not to because, if he did, he wouldn’t be able to vote on it.

            “This is insane,” Morgan said, “I thought to myself, OK, (now) I understand all the jokes about government, and how none of this process works at all, and to be quite honest, I was appalled.”

            A local citizen then made the appeal, right before Morgan found out that all he’d needed to do was ask the City Manager to appeal it for him.

            “It wasn’t that I wanted this agendized so I can overturn it,” Morgan said, “it was just, I think, this is a big enough issue at this time in the City’s history that, I think, perhaps the elected officials need to discuss this.”

            After Morgan finished his self-proclaimed “monologue” on what he called the “disturbing chain of events” that finally brought the issue to the agenda, the Council voted unanimously to “hear” it at a later date without opening up the floor for public comment.

            Local activist Mark Herrera, a member of the Parks Commission, had been waiting all night to speak on behalf of the Commission and to voice his own “personal outrage.”

            “Waste of my (…) time,” Herrera said, under his breath as he got up to leave.

            When asked how he felt about the decision, Herrera said, “I’m just upset that they didn’t let the public get an opportunity to stand up. If they have the opportunity to speak about something, so should we.” He then added, “Some people just want to get rid of things instead of finding solutions.”

            Ironically, Herrera could have spoken if he would have stuck around for the “From the Floor” portion of the agenda. 

Traveler Gives his Take on Chico Homeless Situation

                                                                                                                       Photo of Jay

I spent two hours in the downtown Chico plaza on Thursday, October 10, talking to a couple of homeless women named Cherry and Robin. When I got home that night, I couldn’t find my notes.

The next morning I retraced my steps back to the plaza. I didn’t find my notes there either, or Cherry or Robin, but I did meet a young man named Jay who gave me his take on the homeless situation in Chico.

Jay doesn’t describe himself as homeless. He’s got places he could stay. He’s a traveler by choice. He loves being out in the wide-open space, living in absolute freedom, hopping trains from town to town and state to state.

Jay was polite, respectful, intelligent and pleasant to talk to. He had lived in Chico about four years ago and even attended Butte College for a semester, in between stints of living on the road. Since then he’s come through Chico a number of times, and had arrived, this time, just last Wednesday.

I asked Jay how he thought the homeless situation had changed in Chico:

“From the last time I was here, it seems like the kids are more directionless,” Jay said. “When I came here before, more people were into art and wanted to do something separate from just wasting their life away.  I met a lot of musicians here and a lot of people who were travelling. And now, there’re so many people who just stay here and get hooked on meth.

“The town’s changed too,” Jay said. “The cops, I guess for a while, really cracked down on things, put signs up, ‘no pan-handling,’ ‘no spanging.’

“I think people are just fed up with it more than last time I was here. When there were people out playing music and stuff like that, it was more acceptable.  Now, people are abusing the hospitality of strangers.

“I see it everywhere though; it’s not just a Chico problem. Chico’s gotten worse. It’s turning into more like a Portland type situation. Portland, Seattle, all those places, Philadelphia, those places are bad. It’s turning more into an urban situation.”

“What do you think is drawing so many people here?” I asked.

“The big flux of homeless people coming through here and travelling, was there was a rainbow gathering up north,” Jay said. “I’m pretty sure that’s what caused it. I came around that time, too. There were a lot of people. They found out how easy it is to live here: the climate thing, and to make money, and it’s fun. It’s fun to live here.”

“When was that gathering?” I asked

“Three Summers ago,” said Jay. “People talk about how cool it is to be here, you know. And the people are hospitable. The word’s gotten out about this place.”

An Update on the Clean & Safe Campaign

This week, I spoke with Katie Simmons of the Chico Chamber of Commerce and Jovanni Tricerri of the Chico Stewardship Network, to get their perspectives on how the Clean & Safe Chico campaign is going.

I asked them things such as: When was the campaign launched? Which programs are working and which ones are not? When did things really start getting worse? And what they thought the draw was that was attracting so many homeless people to Chico?

Katie started off by saying that late last year certain groups began to get together, such as the Chico Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Chico Business Association, to informally discuss concerns that were bubbling up among businesses and citizens.

The discussions centered on how they and other organizations could steer the community through these issues, while working through their own conflicts of interest, with the same common goal of a healthy community.

Jovanni began by stating that Clean & Safe is not a campaign targeting homelessness. “It’s one of the issues,” he said, “but not the only issue.”

The core issue, according to Jovanni, is community engagement. “As citizens,” he said, “We’re losing our mutual respect for each other.”

He then went on to say, “We’ve lost this idea of community stewardship. We’ve lost the idea of, ‘This is my responsibility.’ It used to be, ‘This is our community.’ Now it’s, ‘We want the City to do it.’ We want the benefits of what other people are doing without having to work for it ourselves.”

Some of the programs that seem to be having a positive effect are the Downtown Ambassadors program and the Street Pastors. But their greatest success so far, they said, is getting all of the different organizations working together, even when they disagree, to set the tone on how to talk about this.

When I asked them what they thought the draw was that was attracting so many homeless people to Chico, they said, "The same things that brought us here."