Savannah deemed urban camping and the storing of personal property at public spaces illegal at Thursday’s city council meeting — but not before a man was escorted from the meeting for an outburst and the mayor demanded an evaluation after 90 days.
A newly approved ordinance stipulates that anyone using public property for living accommodations and storage of personal effects can be arrested by the Savannah Police Department after a single warning. The ordinance requires no warning for officers to confiscate personal property or to “deem the property to be abandoned.” Any confiscated property will be retained by SPD “in a manner consistent with the handling of other confiscated property.”
Council unanimously passed the ordinance after an hour of back-and-forth discussion, which included public comment, although Mayor Van Johnson II set the condition that the council must review the ordinance’s performance after 90 days. On Sept. 25, in a city council workshop, City Manager Jay Melder will present council with an evaluation of the ordinance’s effects on homelessness, Johnson mandated.
Last month, Chatham County passed a similar ordinance prohibiting camping in public spaces. The urban camping ordinances come less than a year after the United States Supreme Court determined that the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause of the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit cities from punishing unhoused individuals for camping outside.
Discussion questions if ordinance criminalizes homelessness
Both members of the council and the public questioned where unhoused individuals would go after being arrested and taken to jail if the ordinance was enacted.
Matthew Henning, the pastor at Savannah’s Lutheran Church of the Ascension, urged the council to consider different ways of addressing homelessness, particularly by addressing the city’s dwindling affordable housing stock. This ordinance, he said, “simply criminalizes homelessness” and doesn’t address the underlying factors that cause it.
“There’s too many pathways, too many obstacles for our homeless, and we don’t need to create more obstacles by criminalizing their condition,” Henning said. “So I would encourage you guys to first create resources for them to come to, especially housing resources and housing-first resources.”
When discussion on the ordinance between council members began, Alderwoman Linda Wilder-Bryan described the ordinance as a means of criminalizing homelessness, although she was most concerned about the ordinance’s lack of specific language on where and how people’s belongings would be stored.
To Alderman Kurtis Purtee, the ordinance represents “another tool” for the city to use to address homelessness in a way that doesn’t criminalize homelessness. He said he does not believe the ordinance will be used to punish people for residing in public places; rather, it provides an additional way for the city to connect unhoused individuals with resources. He described urban camping as both a public safety and public health concern.
“They deserve better” than living in these conditions, Purtee said.
“Give them better. Don’t put them in jail,” Quinn McHugh Fluet shouted in response from the audience, before being escorted from the meeting by a police officer for the interruption. McHugh Fluet, who said he was associated with the Savannah Democratic Socialists of America, was not allowed to speak during the public comment period of Thursday’s meeting because he had spoken on the ordinance in a previous city council meeting, Johnson said.
Jennifer DuLong, chief executive officer of Chatham-Savannah Authority for the Homeless, explained during the public comment period that she believes encampment environments are dangerous for individuals experiencing homelessness, which was why she was in favor of the ordinance.
“If you’re out there, you are among the most vulnerable to be attacked and harmed,” said Kristy Crill, founder of nonprofit restaurant for the homeless The Dive. Krill said she was in favor of the ordinance.
Mayor requests 90-day review
After deliberations by council and before the vote, Johnson explained that he was “struggling” with the ordinance. While he acknowledged concerns that unhoused individuals sometimes commit criminal acts, he felt that anyone committing said acts should be prosecuted in a “criminal manner” for their specific crime.
“My concern with this is, where do you take them?” Johnson asked rhetorically. “Are we moving an issue from one place to another place? Does it become complaint-driven?”
And like Wilder-Bryan, he expressed concern for the lack of procedure on the security of individuals’ belongings.
Like the council members leaning toward approving the ordinance, Johnson acknowledged that the city needs to address homelessness. However, he was concerned that this policy is not practical for Savannah and that it is a “short-term fix.”
With that in mind, he asked the council to only approve the ordinance on the condition that it will be reviewed in 90 days.
“I just think that we have to have a feedback loop to be able to determine if this is working in the way that it is supposed to,” Johnson said. “If it does pass and I see that it is criminalizing, I’m going to be the first to ask for it to be repealed.”