Not in my park

In light of massive federal cuts and changes to welfare programs and an increasingly brutal economic situation for the working poor, the Phoenix metro area’s homelessness crisis is getting worse — a lot worse, according to community organizations that work with unhoused people.

And as matters get more dire, local governments are so far proving themselves unable to address the root causes of their problems. Instead, they seem to be grasping for easy responses to the manifestations of those problems — like unhoused people inhabiting city parks — in an effort to appease the fear and loathing of their more bourgeois-minded residents.

It happened in Tempe last year when the city’s council tried to ram through a new law that targeted mutual aid groups assisting unhoused people in parks. That proved unsuccessful after massive backlash and a campaign to repeal the law via referendum forced the council to retreat.

Now, it’s happening in Phoenix.

Wednesday, the Phoenix City Council approved Ordinance G-7514, which will ban giving food and medical care to the homeless in parks starting June 5, unless an organization gets one of a few permits to do it. Only two permits will be allowed per month in 105 eligible parks. Services will be banned outright in 75 parks.

After the council passed a similar ordinance in December without any public input, it decided to revise the law and held several public meetings to tinker with it.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, approximately 50 residents, medical professionals, community organizers and activists showed up or phoned in to comment on the ordinance — with around three-fourths opposing it. Still, the council voted 6-3 for the new law toward the end of the seven-hour meeting.

Councilwoman Anna Hernandez, one of those who voted against it, told us the day before the vote what dozens of homelessness organizers and experts later echoed at the meeting: the ordinance probably won’t fix any of the problems residents are complaining about.

The needles have understandably become the center of the debate — but almost to the point of being a mesmerizingly shiny object that negates the rest of the issues. Nowhere is that phenomenon more embodied than this beautifully poetic statement from Councilwoman Betty Guardado, who supported the ordinance:

Ah yes, certain types of activities — that’s very clear.

City staff and some council members noted that lots of residents have complained about needles in the park, and plenty of people showed up to the meeting to complain about them. One young boy named Miguel Angel even talked about the time he went down a slide in his Maryvale neighborhood and was stuck by a needle in a nightmarish incident.

Certainly, no one wants needles lying around parks.

But as Hernandez and many experts noted, the ordinance is unlikely to fix that. In fact, it will probably make the problem worse by prohibiting needle exchange and distribution — and banning intramuscular naloxone, an overdose treatment.

Brian Toy works with Shot in the Dark, Maricopa County’s longest-running syringe services program. While addressing the council, he cited the American Academy of Pediatrics’ “Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases” to explain why blocking medical care in parks won’t solve the needle problem.

And anyway, the ban on providing medical care — which will now be considered a crime on par with a DUI or assault — seems counterproductive.

In contrast, Phoenix’s more progressive neighbor to the south — Tucson — has no blanket restrictions on third-party groups offering healthcare. Several months ago, in response to requests from community members, the city lifted most restrictions on groups to feed the homeless in city parks. The only restrictions in place are tied to county health department rules.

Thinking logically, it seems far more likely that a park would be left clean if a medical service organization were to pass through that park than if unhoused people were left unattended to in it.

And that’s exactly what the CEO of Circle the City — probably the most impactful of groups that provide services for the homeless in all of Phoenix — said.

Councilwoman Kesha Hodge Washington — who voted for the ordinance — asked Despres to explain. The CEO responded by saying that the two are “equal,” because “nobody is going to be able to provide food or medical care.”

You can read Phoenix New Times’ recent cover story reporting on Circle The City for more about what they do.

But fear, rather than logic, dominated much of the discourse at the meeting. In general, supporters expressed disgust with unhoused people and sometimes referred to them in dehumanizing terms.

An impeccably dressed Maryvale restaurant owner named Guadalupe Galaviz told the council in Spanish that parks had become “infested with vagabundos drugging themselves continuously.”

Besides the use of “infested,” as though the homeless were cockroaches that she wishes would simply disappear en masse, it’s worth noting that the Spanish vagabundo carries a far more recriminatory connotation than the English vagabond.

Several liberal-minded speakers suggested that unhoused people should be directed or transported to places where they can access the resources they need. But the problem that those residents, the council members who supported the ordinance and some city staffers don’t recognize is that you can’t successfully round people up like cattle. Advocates have noted that trust must be built with some members of the unhoused community with mental health issues — that’s why meeting them where they are is important.

Other medical professionals pointed out the further shortcomings of the ordinance. Sister Adele O’Sullivan, the doctor who founded Circle the City, politely told the council that she appreciated that the council is listening to their constituents and trying to address the problems.

Indeed, even Councilwoman Ann O’Brien — who strongly supported the ordinance and voted for it — noted that the Phoenix Fire Department is worried about an increase in emergency room trips. But she claimed the ordinance will “allow services to continue while ensuring our parks remain safe, clean spaces that families can confidently use.”

That’s correct, technically speaking. But to give food or medical care to someone in a park, you have to know months ahead of time when you’re going to do that, and be competing for the bimonthly permits.

O’Brien — and several other council members — seemed to have made up their minds before the vote, as evident in one back-and-forth.

Joel Cornejo, the executive director of social justice organization Semillas Arizona, delivered a fiery rebuke of the ordinance as a denial of mutual aid that will “regulate survival” and result in more deaths. He also questioned the city’s needle narrative by adding that several organizations like his worked together to audit 12 parks and didn’t find any needles — a statement that O’Brien and Guardado were quick to pounce on with disingenuous “gotcha” questions.

(That’s coming from an elected official who ignored widespread opposition from hundreds of her constituents to a light rail project she wanted to notch for her district and then told us she was too tired to talk about all that opposition.)

Cheers wailed throughout the rowdy audience.

O’Brien questioned how Cornejo, using such a small sample size, could conclude “there were no needles in any of our parks.”

But Cornejo wasn’t claiming that at all; O’Brien either didn’t understand what he said or was twisting his words and returning them.

It seems the council, feeling pressure to do something, might be willfully missing the point. Hernandez noted that the whole process of drafting the ordinance lacked stakeholder input — which also appeared to be true of the meeting.

The context Hernandez alluded to bears some elucidation. Gas prices are reaching record highs, the economy is getting weaker and veering toward recession, massive federal cuts to welfare programs are hitting hard, and an unprecedented surge of families are ending up homeless and on the streets across the Valley — all while the unforgiving summer heat approaches.

And beyond that, the constitutionality of the ordinance may be in question.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona opposes the law on the grounds of First Amendment freedoms. Harrison Redmond, a community organizer for the ACLU of Arizona, argued that feeding neighbors is expressive activity protected by the First Amendment and noted a number of other legal issues with the ordinance.

A communications strategist for the ACLU told us yesterday that the organization is looking into possible actions, which includes but doesn’t necessarily mean legal steps.

In last year’s Tempe drama, a similar lawsuit was filed in federal court but was put on the backburner before the court could rule on the legal questions at hand. Homelessness advocates and service providers Austin Davis, Ron Tapscott and Jane Parker sued the city for its policies restricting food distribution with the backing of Pacific Legal Foundation, a national public interest law firm, but the suit has been put on hold as the city reevaluates its own parks laws.

It’s possible that something similar will play out in Phoenix — in which case, it’ll be another example in the ongoing homelessness crisis of time and energy expended over legal battles instead of actually getting more people off the streets and healthy.