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East Lansing officials will meet with advocacy organizations critical of a proposed ordinance that would ban camping in public places and loitering in city parking structures, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.
The ACLU of Michigan sent a letter to the city with the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness and the National Homelessness Law Center urging City Council members to reject the proposed ordinances.
New versions of the ordinances introduced during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting would amend existing sections of city code rather than creating a new addition.
The new versions also carry lower punishments for public camping. A first offense would be a civil infraction punishable by a fine of up to $25, while additional offenses within a year of the first would be a misdemeanor punishably by 30 days in jail and a fine of up to $100.
That’s down from a fine of $25 to $100 on a first offense and a maximum fine of $200 for later offenses in the original proposal.
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Residents spoke for more than two hours in opposition to the public camping ban Tuesday night, saying it unfairly targets unhoused community members.
The ordinance would require police officers to make “all reasonable efforts” to place any unhoused individuals in social service facilities before issuing citations.
But mid-Michigan Tenant Resource Center Executive Director Khadja Erickson said the ordinance would displace unhoused residents to neighboring communities, citing a lack of shelters in East Lansing.
Lansing resident Arianna Brown said the nearby capital city has enough challenges without East Lansing relying on it to find space for residents they displace.
“We’re going to need some sort of compensation if, instead of addressing homelessness, you just want us to deal with it,” Brown said.
Michigan State University student Marcos Garcia interns for the mid-Michigan Tenant Resource Center. He compared the ordinance to a kid cleaning their bedroom by shoving everything under their bed.
Erickson said the ordinance criminalizes survival rather than regulating behavior.
“Unhoused residents cannot sleep on private property, they cannot sleep on commercial property, and now this ordinance proposes to make it illegal for them to exist in public space,” Erickson said. “This ordinance authorize punishment for people who have no lawful place to exist.”
The mid-Michigan Tenant Resource Center said it will challenge any version of the camping ban if enacted.
Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness public policy director Nick Cook said the ordinance would invite “legal challenge and moral condemnation” by criminalizing biologically necessary sleep for unhoused individuals.
Michigan State University professor Stephen Przybylinski is an urban and political geographer. He said issuing fines that unhoused individuals cannot afford to pay can escalate to more serious outcomes.
Detaining and releasing them, he said, can establish a criminal record that could affect their ability to get approved for housing in the future.
Social worker Erica Schmittdiel said the costs associated with issuing and processing citations and incarcerating people would be better spent on housing solutions.
“If we have money for jail, we have money for hotel rooms, shelter and rent subsidies,” Schmittdiel said.
Farhan Omar said the city should be focused on housing affordability.
“Criminalizing somebody just because they don’t have a house is like criminalizing people who don’t have cars,” Omar said. “It’s stupid. We didn’t send people to jail for not having cars. We invested in public transit.”
City Council members said they will take the public comments into consideration when they act on the ordinance at their Feb. 17 meeting.
