BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) - The occupants were missing, but the wooded site off North Avenue showed signs of having recently been occupied: a sleeping bag, a dog bowl, an empty bottle of apple-cinnamon-flavored “Muffin Man” electronic cigarette juice.
Last fall, the city had ordered three homeless men who had set up a campsite there to leave.
The three men challenged the removal in federal court, but the city won the right to evict them while their lawsuit debating the constitutionality of the city’s encampment removals policy proceeded. The city’s lawyers argued that the eviction was necessary to protect an ecologically-sensitive sand bluff.
The morning after the men left in early November, a crew of city workers cleared the site, defined by the city as an “urban wild,” of abandoned items.
The case was one of several tension points arising from a debate about homeless camps, public space and disruptive behavior that unfolded in Burlington last summer and fall.
In the wake of that debate, the mayor expressed the goal to keep the city’s only shelter with no sobriety requirement open year-round.
A pair of City Council resolutions sought to enforce disruptive behavior and to better support the homeless community.
And the federal lawsuit was filed.
Nonetheless, a Burlington Free Press examination of the city’s goals to address homelessness and issues related to it finds only a few small steps have been taken since last fall. As the weather warms this spring, it is an open question if the pressures and tensions of 2017 will resume in coming weeks and months.
The federal case against the city did not end in November, with the camp’s eviction.
Former North Avenue encampment residents Brian Croteau, Larry Priest and Richard Pursell and their lawyers, including Jay Diaz from the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, are “actively engaged” in settlement talks with the city, according to a document filed with the court in early April. The parties have met “multiple times” over the past few months.
“I think the city wants to work toward a better system,” he said, though he declined to comment further because settlement talks are confidential.
The city had been operating under a draft policy for homeless encampment removals that had led to differing interpretations between city departments for at least two years, reporting by the Burlington Free Press revealed last October.
The city has yet to substantively change or clarify its policy toward homeless encampments, Diaz said.
The Burlington City Council’s public safety committee, earlier this year, finalized seven recommendations on how the city could better support the homeless community.
One recommendation: have the full City Council review and approve the encampment removal policy.
Councilor Adam Roof, I-Ward 8, who leads the committee and spearheaded the recommendations, said he hopes the policy will come before the council in early summer.
He envisions the policy review happening alongside an “investigation” into how to increase capacity at the seasonal low-barrier shelter, the only city homeless shelter without a sobriety requirement.
“I see those as interconnected,” he said.
Mayor Miro Weinberger has repeatedly talked about piloting a program to keep the low-barrier shelter open year-round.
Last year’s budget included a $60,000 earmark toward the initiative. In October, as the city evicted a camp in the South End that police said posed a public safety threat weeks before the seasonal shelter’s Nov. 1 opening, Weinberger said he was actively looking for partners to keep the shelter from closing in the spring.
In early January, as the mayoral campaign began to heat up, Weinberger said he was talking to potential partners, and that he knew the “clock was ticking.”
“It’s more than my hope, it’s my goal that the shelter not close this year on April 1 as it has for the past 4 years,” he said.
The shelter extended its operations for an extra two weeks, but closed in mid-April.
The city doesn’t typically fund social services, like shelters, but Weinberger said last week that he sees compelling municipal interests, including addressing the encampments, for the city to kick in funds.
Weinberger said he and his administration had “pivoted” to a new strategy when it became clear that the community partners they were pitching weren’t buying in: aim to open the shelter earlier this year.
Some of the other stakeholders they’d approached, he said, “really questioned” whether funding a year-round wet shelter was the best use of money in a state dealing opioid addiction and a mental health crisis.
He’d estimated the shelter would need an additional $120,000 to operate year-round: the $60,000 earmarked from the general fund in last year’s budget, plus the matching funds he’d hoped to raise.
“The true cost turned out to be substantially higher,” he said.
“We aren’t giving up,” he said, noting that he has included another $60,000 earmark for the shelter in his draft budget for the next fiscal year, which will go to the council for approval in the coming weeks.
Councilor Roof’s recommendations arose from a summer City Council resolution intended as a complement to an ordinance change sparked by Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo.
Del Pozo blamed a lack of enforcement for quality of life violations as a cause in the escalation of violence after police arrested a homeless man, Conner Lucas, who they said stabbed another man in the intersection of Church and Main streets.
After months of consideration, the City Council is moving toward a plan to have the city attorneys bring misdemeanor criminal prosecutions against people who rack up multiple tickets for public urination or drinking in a short timeframe, although the plan has yet to kick in.
“I’m not sure that enough was achieved,” said Councilor Kurt Wright, R-Ward 4, who pushed for the greater enforcement. “I really do believe there need to be consequences for bad conduct in our downtown.”
Mark Mackillop, the owner of Muddy Waters, a coffee shop on the block near the stabbing had appealed to the City Council for help dealing with “debauchery” last June, saying that aggressive panhandlers had harassed his employees.
Earlier that spring, the Howard Center had made the “difficult decision” to cut the Street Outreach Team - a group of social workers who spend time on Church Street and City Hall Park, engaging with people suffering from mental health problems, addiction or homelessness - from six positions to four, citing a $200,000 budget shortfall.
The Howard Center has been unable to secure the funding to bring the team back up to six, said Catherine Simonson, the nonprofit’s chief client services officer, late last week.
The nonprofit admitted last year the team would not have the same visibility downtown. The team still numbers four.
Police began storing barricades on that stretch of sidewalk last August, stopping panhandlers from sitting against the wall. Del Pozo claimed the primary reason was to keep the metal barriers close to downtown in case of an unruly protest or rally - but admitted the barriers had a “calming effect” on the corner.
Del Pozo has yet to respond to a request for comment.
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Information from: The Burlington Free Press, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com
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