Sonoma County homeless advocates take quality-of-life infractions to court

Amid increased enforcement of sidewalk rules, advocates are going to court to challenge dozens of violations.|

Santa Rosa assistant city attorney Rob Jackson submitted as evidence a photo from a police body cam showing a line of tents along the sidewalk of the 9th Street underpass beneath Highway 101.

The tent that Merry Potter, 27, occupied stuck out into the sidewalk farther than the rest.

Potter’s volunteer attorneys, Colleen O’Neal and Victoria Yanez, examined the photos before a court bailiff handed them to Commissioner Anthony Wheeldin. Santa Rosa police Sgt. Jon Wolf watched the proceedings with several other uniformed police officers, summoned to court that afternoon to testify against Potter and other homeless people.

“Ms. Potter was there out of necessity,” said O’Neal, citing a 1998 California Court of Appeal ruling that essentially said the inability for a homeless person to find housing or proper shelter should be considered when anti-camping laws are violated.

The scene played out last Wednesday afternoon like countless other trials - attorneys presenting evidence and cross-examining witnesses, the judge posing key questions, the defendant’s fate hanging in the balance.

In this case, the judge weighed whether Potter’s difficulty finding housing justified her blocking the sidewalk, a violation of Santa Rosa City Code 10-12.030. The code prohibits people from lying or sitting on any street, sidewalk or public path in a way that hinders or obstructs passersby.

Such cases rarely go to trial. Usually, a fine is paid, or in some cases the citation is ignored. But in response to stepped-up local enforcement against illegal homeless encampments, advocates have begun challenging municipal code violations such as littering, blocking sidewalks or illegal camping on public streets.

“This whole action of defending individuals, it ends up costing them more,” said Yanez, a local attorney and activist with Homeless Action.

Since May 10, about a dozen cases have gone to court where homeless people are challenging violations of Santa Rosa’s quality-of-life ordinances. The trials, 52 cases in total, are being heard before Commissioner Anthony Wheeldin in Sonoma County Traffic Court, Dept. 14, at the Hall of Justice in Santa Rosa.

More trials are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon this week. The bulk involve citations handed out over the winter to people who were illegally camping downtown in Highway 101 underpasses, including 9th and 6th streets.

One of the first trials heard in Wheeldin’s court, on May 10, involved Jacob Robinson, 21-year-old homeless man cited for laying on a blanket on the sidewalk outside Beer Baron Bar & Kitchen at Old Courthouse Square in downtown Santa Rosa. Jackson, the assistant city attorney, presented video of the encounter between police and Robinson, with special consideration given to whether Robinson forced passersby to alter their path and walk around him.

Wheeldin asked O’Neal if those walking by had to “change their free passage before the statute would apply.”

“He’s not hindering anyone from using that corner of the sidewalk,” said O’Neal. “I don’t see that he was blocking anything.”

In the end, Wheeldin sided with Robinson and the homeless advocates, but made it clear the verdict would have been different if any of the dozens of people who walked past the homeless man had been forced to walk around him.

It’s unclear how much money is being spent defending and prosecuting court infractions of city code. The cases are decided by Wheeldin, without a jury, because they involve mere infractions. Jackson, the assistant city attorney, said he hopes the first few cases making their way through the judicial process will “set a model” for speedy resolution of the others.

Yanez and O’Neal have hammered out plea deals with Jackson for many of those cases, which involve similar sidewalk obstruction in the downtown underpasses.

That deal allows homeless defendants to do forgo a $100 fine by either completing 16 hours of community service or show proof they’ve entered into a county program known as “coordinated entry,” a streamlined system for accessing housing, shelter, and services.

“We’re trying to do this in a way that encourages folks to seek help if they want it,” said Jackson. “And if they don’t, give them something that isn’t so punitive.”

Last August, the Santa Rosa City Council approved steps to crack down on certain quality-of-life offenses, including camping on public property, aggressive panhandling and public urination. Shortly after, police and outreach workers convinced the remaining campers at “Homeless Hill” to abandon their campsites one day before contractors hired by the city cleared the undeveloped city property near the intersection of Farmers Lane and Bennett Valley Road.

Three months later, in November, homeless encampments under Highway 101 were cleared out, a move that sent many of the campers to the now-shuttered Roseland Village encampment behind the Dollar Tree on Sebastopol Avenue.

Yanez and other Homeless Action activists decided to defend those who were hit with infractions following last year’s encampment sweeps.

Standing before Wheeldin, Potter explained that she had been unsuccessful applying for housing through HUD and other local housing programs. Her attorneys were banking on a “necessity defense” as a justification for her city code violation.

In the end, Wheeldin found her guilty, explaining that the 1998 appellate court ruling, known as the Eichorn case, involved sleeping and illegal camping, not obstructing a sidewalk in the daytime.

“The court rules that the argument of necessity does not apply here,” Wheeldin said.

The ruling set the stage for resolving many of the other cases through a plea deal.

Yanez said Homeless Action will continue to challenge the infractions in court until the city and county have adequate shelter and permanent housing for the homeless. She said Potter is being forced to sign “up for housing that doesn’t exist.”

“We will defend them even more forcefully, because people have to sleep. It’s a physiological function of the body,” she said.

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