Manchester NH News – An approved Manchester NH Ordinance, put forward by Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais which is part of a multi-step plan to address homelessness and includes the banning of camping in public spaces, has now come into force.
Manchester’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen approved a change to city ordinances to ban camping on city streets and in parks at all times at a vote on on Tuesday 2nd July. The Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted to suspend their usual rules in order to skip over committee votes and further readings to have the ban take effect as soon as possible.
Previously, the city ordinance only banned camping in public areas between sunset and sunrise and only when there was space available in an overnight shelter but the new ruling follows a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that cities can enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outdoors, even in areas where shelter space is lacking.
Mayor Jay Ruais commented, “We’re going to allow police discretion to remove anybody that looks as though they’re camping, planning to camp, or remove tarps if there are tarps that are set up along the sidewalks,”
The ordinance allows violators to be fined up to $250.
“We cannot arrest our way out of homelessness,”
The vote followed more than 90 minutes of public comment on the proposal, with people speaking both in favor of and against the ban and although one person was quoted as saying that “we cannot arrest our way out of homelessness”, others spoke of the blight on the cities streets, public spaces, homes and businesses, caused by homeless encampments Aldermen moved forward in approving the ban in a 14-1 vote.
Homelessness a Complex Issue
Whilst the recent Supreme Court Ruling and the likes of Manchester NH, putting policies into place on the back of that ruling, to reduce the blight associated with homeless encampments, most will agree that just allowing the issue of homeless encampments to develop to breaking point, is not the answer.
You only have to look at California and the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco to see that allowing homeless encampments to go unchecked, sees increases in localised crime, public disorder, drug taking, and poor sanitation combined with impacts to local housing, businesses and public spaces.
Under the amended city ordinance, Manchester NH police can now remove people from the streets, day or night, regardless of emergency shelter availability. Mayor Ruais said the city has the resources to support people who choose to be on the streets.
“If you want help and you need help in the city of Manchester, it exists,” Ruais said. “What we won’t tolerate is people breaking our laws or ignoring our ordinances.”
“It’s the enforcement mechanism that we have in place,” he said. “This is not criminalizing it. Nobody’s going to jail as a result of this. This is the deterrence effect.”
Manchester NH Police Chief Allen Aldenberg said of the new ordinance, “I’ll be frank with you. This has been a strain on this police department and this community as a whole for the last several years.”
“So that people that want to come and sit in the park with their family on a nice day like today, and perhaps they’ll see a police officer, and they’ll feel more comfortable doing so. If they [homeless people] want to be in the parks as well and act appropriately and not drink there, not urinate there, not sleep there, then they’re more than welcome to be there, as well,” said Chief Aldenberg.
In implementing the Manchester Ordinance banning public camping, Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais said he has put an 11-step plan into action to help unhoused people since he took office, including an expansion of resources to help homeless people get identification and bus passes, and expanding outreach efforts. The mayor and aldermen also gave the police department an extra $500,000 to deal with enforcement.
More than 650,000 people are estimated to be homeless, the most since the country began using a yearly point-in-time survey in 2007.
