The Fresno City Council on Thursday is expected to adopt a handful of changes to city code, with most aimed at granting the Fresno City Attorney more power to pursue legal action against violators of its anti-encampment law.
The updates to city code will come through a single item with sweeping consequences, which passed its first hurdle for approval at a council meeting earlier this month. That meeting saw the changes approved through a procedural vote.
The item includes language to codify loitering as a violation of the law, and will add an amendment to the original ordinance that would grant the City Attorney with tools to more easily place misdemeanor charges against repeat offenders of the city’s ordinance.
“At my direction, amendments to the 2024 Fresno ordinance creates a civil non-criminal process as an alternative option,” Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz told Fresnoland on Monday. “This has nothing to do with Mr. Wickey Two-Hands’ class action lawsuit. The original ordinance is constitutional, and upon passage, the City will continue to utilize criminal and civil options to regulate behavior in public spaces.”
The vote comes on the heels of a class action lawsuit filed last week against the city over its anti-encampment law.
Local homeless advocate Dez Martinez is among the critics that say such a law is inherently “discriminatory,” with law enforcement only targeting loiterers who are homeless individuals.
“It’s an ordinance that is for everyone, but it’s only focused on one set of individuals here in the city,” Martinez said, “and that is discrimination.”
A homeless individual who identified herself as “Nikki” said she has protested the anti-encampment law at city council meetings before. She told Fresnoland on Monday that she believes the new changes are “too broad and confusing,” and that it doesn’t reflect the “help” people like her need.
“It’s easy for people to say that residents need to be accountable for themselves, which is true,” Nikki said. “At the same time, you look at somebody who’s doing the right thing and trying to get their act together … should we blame them for what they have to do? They need a little bit more help.”
The city has already received dozens of digital and in-person public comments, mostly in opposition to the proposed changes.
Though the city council has not discussed these specific changes publicly, they’ve maintained that the anti-encampment policy is a necessary tool to support public health and safety, adding that they represent a large constituency that chooses to remain quiet in their support for the law given its controversial nature.
The changes are listed as a single consent agenda item, which generally gets approved unless a city councilmember pulls it for discussion.
Martinez said every unhoused person she knows has had the same question ever since the law passed last year.
“The only question I get back is, ‘well, where am I supposed to go?,” Martinez said. “And nobody is answering that question.”
That question has lingered in Fresno for more than a year ever since the anti-encampment ordinance first passed last year.
Other proposed changes included in the sweeping action item include new legal remedies against individuals who are accused of stealing city-owned garbage equipment and public shopping carts.
The council is also scheduled to hold a hearing on the South East Development Area plan on Thursday in the late afternoon.
The next Fresno City Council meeting is set for 9 a.m. Thursday at Fresno City Hall inside the second floor council chambers. Residents can also follow along virtually through a livestream on Zoom or the city’s Youtube channel.
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