Berkeley Poised to OK Crackdown on Homeless

BERKELEY —  Here in the land of free speech and the home of the brazen, a City Council of legendary liberalness is poised to choose capitalists over street kids.

Tonight, Berkeley’s council is expected to ratify ordinances aimed at taking the city’s colorful main commercial streets back from bands of homeless street youths and their dogs who have turned parts of Telegraph and Shattuck avenues into urban campgrounds.

“What we’re trying to do is ensure sidewalk accessibility,” said Council member Polly Armstrong, who co-authored the proposed ordinances. “We continue to be an extremely liberal city, and we are proud of that. But there’s a difference between liberal and lawless.”

The proposed rules--which bubbled up from complaints by local business owners about aggressive panhandling and open drug dealing --would prohibit people from sleeping or lying on Telegraph and Shattuck during the day. In the canine corollary, the regulations would ban pet owners from allowing three or more dogs to stand or lie within 10 feet of one another.

The new rules would bring Berkeley into line with cities across the state and country that have tackled the tough issues of homelessness. Nearly seven years ago, progressive Santa Monica passed what was believed to be the nation’s first sweeping crackdown to end its “Skid Row by the Sea” image. Since then, a variety of anti-homelessness efforts have swept across the country in liberal and conservative cities alike.

Some students at the UC campus, which sits at the top of Telegraph Avenue, welcome the proposed Berkeley ordinances.

“I don’t mind them cracking down, because it gets really annoying here,” said 20-year-old senior Weijean Strand. “This is a college town, and I know people come here because of the freedom. But at the same time, you want to upkeep the community.”

The homeless, however, are less than impressed. Shane Scully, a 27-year-old with a large blue star tattooed on his forehead, calls the sidewalks of Telegraph Avenue home and has no plans to leave.

“Why should I go someplace else to be happy when I’m happy here?” asked Scully, a native Rhode Islander who lounged on a green blanket one recent day with his German Rottweiler, Isabelle.

Colorful Characters of Telegraph Avenue

Sometimes called the “People’s Republic of Berkeley,” this city has stood since the 1960s as a symbol of tolerance. Nothing embodies that spirit more than Telegraph Avenue, with its colorful array of bookshops, cafes and street vendors who sell everything from pottery to “I Love Hemp” T-shirts.

Vietnam War protesters marched down Telegraph, and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg dreamed up verse at its Caffe Mediterraneum.

That counterculture aura has long attracted street people such as Scully. Residents who oppose the new rules stress that these young nomads wander a well-trod circuit that includes Berkeley, Portland, Ore., and Tucson, moving along as whim or weather dictate. They are often fleeing abusive families or have simply decided to drop out of middle-class society.

But a coalition of merchants has demanded that the city sweep the streets clean of these wanderers and their canine companions, threatening to move businesses elsewhere.

Andy Ross, owner of Cody’s Books, which has been a mainstay of Telegraph Avenue for two decades, said his business has dropped 15% in the last year because of the street squatters.

Several of his 70 employees, he said, told him that they had been verbally threatened by drug dealers and felt unsafe leaving the store at night. After he openly complained to the city, he said, he ended up with about a dozen broken storefront windows over the last year that he suspects were retribution for his complaints.

“I think there’s a time when the community just has to come together and say, ‘Hey, we’re being victimized here,’ ” said Marc Weinstein, owner of Amoeba Music, which has been on Telegraph Avenue for nine years.

Ordinances banning public sleeping or sitting in commercial areas are a 1990s municipal tool for dealing with homelessness. Recent examples include an ordinance banning public camping in Austin, Texas, and rules against sitting on Philadelphia sidewalks, according to Richard Troxell, director of Legal Aid for the Homeless in Austin.

“We see this happening throughout many cities in the United States,” said Troxell, who is also a board member of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

California law already allows police to clear sidewalks after 10 p.m. If the Berkeley City Council passes the proposed ordinances, police would have the same ability throughout the day. If approved, the ordinances would take effect in a month and last for 16 months.

In late October, the traditionally liberal Berkeley City Council voted to increase police patrols on Telegraph Avenue to clamp down on drug dealers. Deputy Police Chief Roy Meisner described the result as a “huge increase” in arrests since late October, including 64 for drugs, mainly selling marijuana, and 55 for public drunkenness.

That crackdown, coupled with the winter chill, has cleared the sidewalks of many of the street youths and homeless people who usually hang out here.

On a recent afternoon, less than a dozen such people sat or loitered in the area. Scully said police often come around at 10 p.m. and tell the youths to get off the sidewalk.

On Nov. 24, the City Council voted 5-1 to tentatively pass the two ordinances. The rules are part of an effort by Armstrong and other council members to enact legislation modeled after Measure O, a 1994 initiative passed by voters that banned aggressive panhandling. The measure was later tied up in court and dropped by a more liberal City Council.

Kriss Worthington, the City Council member who represents Telegraph and cast the sole vote against the new rules, suggests that the city needs to work on more long-term solutions, including homeless shelters, detoxification programs and enforcement of existing laws “rather than making up a host of new laws.”

Because he’s witnessed different policy cycles, Scully seems unfazed by the upcoming ordinances. “I’m going to stick it out here and fight [in] the courts,” he said as he ate some crackers.

A companion, Jason Dallas, 24, originally from Kansas City, Mo., has been in Berkeley for two weeks and on the road intermittently for nine years “to see the world.” He criticized the rules as “just another excuse to get rid of us.”

Dallas conceded that a few street youths do break the law and hassle other people. “There’s the occasional bad apple, but every group has one. It’s just a given,” said Dallas, who was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt and a red knit cap. He was sitting on top of a backpack in front of a tattoo parlor and smoke shop.

Kain Wesson, 20, of Ogden, Utah, said he has been in Berkeley five months and insists that he and his Rottweiler, Jezebel, won’t be chased away.

“I don’t care what they are trying to do. I’m going to do whatever I want with my dog. My dog has just as much right as I do,” said Wesson, who was wearing a black knit cap, Army fatigue pants and a T-shirt with a cannabis plant logo.

Social workers say that many of the street youths have mental illnesses or need help coping with family and drug problems.

“We are certain there is no quick fix for the conscious hard work of providing housing and dealing with individual problems leading to homelessness,” said Sally Hindman, executive director of Chaplaincy to the Homeless, which works out of a church a few blocks from Telegraph Avenue. The group’s youth drop-in center, the only one of its kind in Berkeley, sees up to 20 visitors per day.

The intractable problem of homelessness often balloons into a heated political issue in the Bay Area.

Former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan enraged the city’s homeless advocates by having police officers write tens of thousands of citations to the homeless, driving them from the city to the suburbs. Campaigning against Jordan in 1995, current Mayor Willie Brown savaged the former police chief for his hard line, only to turn around last year and order a crackdown on squatters in Golden Gate Park--complete with night helicopter patrols.

But newcomers to Berkeley may find that a sanitized People’s Republic isn’t exactly conducive to hanging out. Jamarah Smith, 19, had just arrived the previous night from Humboldt County. On this afternoon, she sat on an Army duffel bag next to her Airedale and a shopping cart, waiting to head down to San Diego the next day with a friend.

If she had more time, would she stay? Smith looked up and down the street, then shook her head. “It’s too boring here,” she said.