Camping ban ordinance DOA
For months, city officials have been working behind the scenes on an ordinance designed to make “sleeping or lying down” on city property illegal. The reveal did not go so well.
According to Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis, the process of coming up with a "camping ban" ordinance began in April with individual conversations with city councilors, the formation of a working group of city officials, and a directive for the city attorneys office to draft the ordinance, but as Councilor Lloyd Snook said during a reading of the new ordinance before City Council on Tuesday evening, he'd only seen it for the first time over the Labor Day weekend. Indeed, there was no public announcement about the proposed ordinance, and the first local news report about it appeared on Saturday. Still, that was enough time for opposition to the proposal to gather steam, and City Hall chambers was packed with people almost entirely opposed to the new ordinance.
"The way this proposal came about was incredibly disrespectful to our community," said Mathew Gilkin, co-chair of Livable Cville, during the public comment period, " ...dropping a total change to the city's approach to addressing homelessness on a holiday weekend. You wouldn't have people being quite as snippy with you tonight if we had been given a little more respect."
Indeed, speaker after speaker delivered blistering critiques of the proposed ordinance, calling it “inhumane,” a “boot to the face” of homeless people, and an “abomination.”
After public comments and Chief Kochis’s presentation on the proposed ordinance — which would ban sleeping, camping, and storing any belongings in public areas and be considered a Class 4 misdemeanor punishable by a fine — there was little interest from Council in publicly supporting what they had collectively asked the city attorney’s office to draft. They quickly voted 5-0 to table the idea indefinitely.
In fact, Councilor Snook, an attorney, wondered aloud about the morality of the ordinance.
“Sure, the Supreme Court decided it was legal,” he said, “ but is it moral and ethical…is it practical?”
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned a lower court ruling that deemed a "camping ban" ordinance in Grants Pass, Oregon, was unconstitutional, on which the proposed Charlottesville ordinance relies.
Both Snook and Councilor Michael Payne said the new ordinance didn't make much sense without having shelters or places for people to go. Indeed, it was a question even conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised during oral arguments, asking how such an ordinance would help if there weren't enough shelter beds and how punishing people for having no place to live would help improve their situation.
Vice Mayor Brian Pinkston struck an oddly defensive tone, saying he "didn't think he was a bad person" for considering the idea of such an ordinance and acknowledged the crowd’s desire to get rid of him.
“My time is almost up, I’m sure you’ll all be glad for that,” Pinkston said, which resulted in a round of applause. Competing with newcomer Jen Fleisher and Mayor Juandiego Wade for two spots in the June Democratic primary election, Pinkston got just 13.5 percent of the vote.
“Yes, the lived experience is essential,” said Pinkston, acknowledging the homeless and homeless advocates who spoke, “but the experience of the business community and the people who visit the Downtown Mall is absolutely relevant.”
However, during his presentation on the ordinance, Chief Kochis mentioned almost nothing about the Downtown Mall. As he told Council, “…the ordinance is simply about safety and health measures that we consistently see, specifically around large encampments,” later citing the encampment under Freebridge that was recently removed. Kochis very briefly cited “interference with scheduled city work” as a reason for prioritizing the mall area, suggesting police could remove someone’s belongings under the proposed ordinance if they were in the way of city cleaning crews. Of course, a close reading of the ordinance shows that it's substantially broader than a general "camping ban" and includes "sleeping or lying down" on public property (the DTM is public property), but Kochis did not emphasize its use on the Downtown Mall.
Pinkston instead appeared to be responding to Greer Achenbach, executive director of Friends of Cville Downtown, the only person who spoke in favor of the ordinance. Achenbach said she was representing “many visitors and business owners on the Downtown Mall who are afraid to speak in favor of this ordinance for fear they will be misrepresented.” Pinkston later defended Achenbach on WINA's morning news show, saying "she couldn’t get through her speech without people treating her in a way that was discourteous and unkind because they think their vision about how to deal with the unhoused must be the right one," and calling it a "shame" that a conversation about the ordinance was shut down.
Again, how this new ordinance would be applied to situations on the Downtown Mall was never seriously explored in the agenda items, in the presentation that Chief Kochis gave, or during Council discussions, but Achenbach forged ahead.
“The lack of ordinances is leading to a decrease in visitors and business activity on the Downtown Mall,” said Achenbach to some heckling from the crowd, which she responded to by smiling. “Case in point, Alakazam Toy Store, an iconic place that has been here for 19 years, is now closing its doors. The owner cited a 35 percent decline in sales, attributing much of it to families no longer feeling comfortable bringing their children to the Downtown Mall.”
However, back in May, Alakazam Toys owner Ellen Joy told 29News that tariffs on goods from China (where many toys come from) were hitting the store hard, and that suppliers were raising prices as much as 40 percent. Indeed, other toy stores are feeling the pinch. West Side Kids, a beloved toy store in New York City for over 40 years, closed over the summer, citing tarifs, Covid, and online shopping as the reasons for its demise.
“I [saw and read] the writing on the wall and know that in the next couple of months, unless something changes, we’re going to be feeling a real squeeze,” Joy said.
I reached out to Joy about Achenbach's comments, but she has yet to respond.
As you might recall, Achenbach was joined by three Friends of Cville Downtown board members last July to raise concerns about unsafe conditions on the Downtown Mall, warning Councilors that the mall “would not survive” if they didn’t do something. However, several Downtown business owners showed up to say they weren't worried about safety on the Downtown Mall and that their businesses were doing great. "I get really annoyed that we talk about it as if the unhoused folks were the problem," said one business owner, "but they're not the problem...the problem is that they have nowhere to live.”
Michael Caplin, Chair of the Friends of C-Ville Downtown, told councilors that, “everyone I talk to says they stopped coming downtown because it’s no longer fun.” He called it an “unregulated park where people are sleeping and sitting morning, noon, and night. He called on councilors to act so that “ the bricks do not become an unregulated pop-up campground.”
A year later, a proposed “camping ban” ordinance suddenly appeared on City Council’s agenda.
Clearly, Council members felt some pressure to entertain the idea of a “camping ban” ordinance at some point, peppered as they probably have been with complaints from the business community about the presence of homeless people on the Downtown Mall and other places, but I suspect they knew the rollout wasn’t going to be popular. And it certainly didn’t align with their ongoing efforts to provide more affordable housing and shelter beds for the unhoused.
However, I’m not sure they were prepared for having their humanity questioned.
Fortunately for council members, they didn't have to face a pastor in his clerical collar before they decided to abandon the ordinance, because Rev. Matthew Seaton, pastor at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, was clearly prepared to deliver a sermon.
"Wow, I had to change my temper after the decision," he said during the post-decision public comment period, calling the ordinance "an abomination" and expressing gratitude to Councilors for rejecting it.
Rev. Seaton went on to explain that Jesus taught him that all laws are rooted in two things: love of God and love of neighbor.
"And so I want to speak to you as God's beloved," he said. “When you entertain such things in the future, ask yourself, is this rooted in love and therefore God’s justice for our neighbors? When you think about our unhoused neighbors, ask yourself, would you do this to Christ if he were here tonight?"