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An encampment of unhoused individuals in downtown Jackson could remain in place until at least September after City Council members voted Tuesday to remove an emergency designation from an ordinance meant to keep public spaces clear of personal property.
City Council members heard hours of public comment from residents and local business owners concerned about a growing encampment near the historic Carnegie Library.
Heather Kingsley is the general manager of Oak + Iron, a restaurant located about a block away from the encampment. She said customers have written emails and Facebook comments saying they no longer feel safe downtown.
“I run a restaurant in a beautiful neighborhood, and we’re trying to build a community of loyal customers who love supporting local businesses,” Kingsley said.
She said employees have been followed to their vehicles and had their vehicles broken into, while guests have been asked for money outside the restaurant’s doors.
The ordinance being considered by City Council members would prohibit tents from being erected on public land without a permit.
It would also bar the storage of excessive or unattended personal property in public areas like sidewalks and parks.
City Attorney Matthew Hagerty said the city has a responsibility to make downtown a welcoming, safe environment while treating everyone with dignity and respect.
“A city that responds to downtown concerns by quietly discarding someone’s only belongings, or by treating the unsheltered residents in our city as a problem to be moved along rather than people to be helped, has failed just as surely as a city that ignores downtown’s concerns entirely,” Hagerty said.
He said the ordinance is not meant to solve homelessness, but to provide a mechanism to narrowly address a specific concern.
“We’re not the only city that’s having a meeting this full of people that care and are stakeholders and want to cure homelessness and walk their kids to the public library for story hour without being accosted,” Hagerty said.
But housing advocates who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting argued the ordinance would disproportionately impact unhoused individuals.
Nick Cook is the director of public policy at the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness. He said the ordinance “frames people experiencing homelessness primarily as an obstacle to be managed rather than neighbors in need of assistance.”
“For individuals sleeping outdoors because they have nowhere else to go, a tent is not a nuisance. It is a shelter,” Cook said. “A backpack is not excess property. It may contain everything a person owns, including identification, medication, family photographs, legal documents and the tools they need to survive.”
Passing the measure as an emergency ordinance, so that it would go into effect later this week, would have required six of seven City Council members to vote yes.
City Council members amended it to go through the regular ordinance process after it became clear it would not have the votes to pass as an emergency ordinance because several members wanted to make amendments.
Councilmember Shalanda Hunt said enforcing the ordinance without a plan for where unhoused individuals will go could lead to them scattering and sleeping on benches or other public property, which would still be allowed.
“If we execute tonight, they’re gone tomorrow to a different location,” Hunt said. “To do nothing says that we’re okay with it. We see the problem. We are acknowledging that this is a problem. But there’s no one action that can mitigate or reducate what the heart of downtown is currently facing.”
City Council members will consider amendments next month to increase the minimum notice before removing property in some areas, establish additional guidelines for when to issue fines, create a mechanism to extend the deadline to retrieve property and exempt certain essential items from being impounded.
If the ordinance is approved at the August meeting, it would go into effect in mid-September.
Mayor Daniel Mahoney said the ordinance weighed heavily on him as someone who has previously experienced homelessness and he spent hours getting questions answered by the city attorney.
“If the homeless people were still under the bridges, in the woods, behind the buildings, where people could not see them, we probably would not be having this conversation right now,” Mahoney said. “That’s the sickening thing about this.”
