Public Comment
No Room at the Inn.
Attention Berkeley residents: Do you have one of those signs that says:
"No matter where you're from**, we're glad you're our neighbor.""We Believe... No Human is Illegal**..."
In other words, when faced with a homeless crisis, after professing to want to do everything possible to alleviate said crisis, and after declaring recurring shelter emergencies, the City Council voted to make homelessness an even more extreme problem in Berkeley than it is already.
This action was driven by complaints from housed residents and business owners in West Berkeley. But instead of considering reasonable regulations to limit the number or density of RVs in any one location, to provide assistance to those surviving in RVs by providing dumping facilities, and/or treating those forced to live in RVs, including children, as human beings -- as almost the entire public requested before the vote, even those insisting that 'something has to be done' -- the Council chose a draconian response. No public speaker, including those most affected by the aggregation of RVs in West Oakland, spoke in favor of outright banishment, and yet the Council could barely contain itself in its eagerness to enact legislation that no one in the community apparently advocated for nor apparently wanted.
Not only is this vote by the Berkeley City Council cruel, but the ordinance, or parts of it, and existing law that prohibits living in vehicles, may be against the law.
In June of 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a ban on living in vehicles as unconstitutionally vague and an invitation to discriminate against the poor.
(C.f. https://www.latimes.com/local/
In August, 2018, in Bloom v San Diego, a federal judge blocked San Diego from enforcing municipal code outlawing living in vehicles because "the ordinance is both vague on its face and is being arbitrarily enforced." (C.f. https://www.courthousenews.
In September, 2018, in Martin v Boise, the Ninth Circuit ruled that it was unconstitutional to outlaw people's needs as human beings in public spaces (e.g. the necessity for sleep) if a City could not provide a place for them to go.
(C.f. https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/
"We consider whether the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment bars a city from prosecuting people criminally for sleeping outside on public property when those people have no home or other shelter to go to. We conclude that it does."
The City of Berkeley has continued to refuse to designate any place for Berkeley resident RV dwellers to live, the City has evicted them from their previous residences at the Marina, and its shelters are full. Outlawing their residences (their RVs) and condemning them to effective banishment or unsheltered street survival arguably falls under a similar rubric.
Regardless of the legal and constitutional, Berkeley is engaging in the unethical and immoral. We profess our support and willingness to provide sanctuary for those from foreign lands, yet we refuse to humanely deal with those of us within our City's borders on the brink of losing all they have. It's time for the Council (and each of us) to look a little more carefully into the mirror, to reconsider what we are doing, and, on March 26th, for the Council to refuse to enact this ordinance into law.
