Homeless encampment controversy

Vice Mayor Alex Brown motioned to eliminate evictions of homeless encampments of under ten people to help slow the spread of Covid-19 during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.

This guidance and ignoring this science will prolong the disease in our area& this is crazy we're doing all the things that we can" two different sides& the bottom line is chico police officers cannot evict or cite people living in homeless encampments.

Action news now's vanessa romo joins us with how this decided that conversation was not even on tuesday night's city council agenda& but was ignited by one question& a motion& now this.

"it brings us in compliance with the cdc guidelines on homeless encampments."

Vice mayor alex brown motioned to eliminate evictions of homeless encampments of under ten people to help slow the spread of covid-19.

That motion passed in a 4 to 3 vote during tuesday nights meeting.

Councilman scott huber& voting yes.

"if you force these people out of the spot that they are currently in they are going to go to other neighborhoods and if they are carrying the virus they will spread the virus as they go& that's the concern and that's why we did what we did last night."

However - councilman sean morgan believes it is unfair.

We're telling business owners, go home.

Shut your door even if you're practicing safe social distancing and all the safe things you've heard about.

No, don't do that, but on the other side we're telling the homeless encampments you know what go ahead and do whatever you want and that is a really bad message to send especially when there are people who are losing their livelihoods morgan says the city should have trusted its officers to make those decisions.

When news gets out that hey you can go to chico and be in an encampment and as long as it's not more than 10 people, the police can't do anything about it, don't worry about the social distancing as long as it's in a homeless encampment and its in our parks and waterways, hey we're okay while many locals are afraid of unhealthy encampments in their area--- huber believes that if the city follows c-d-c guidelines and ensures proper facilities and materials for the homeless, everybody will be o.k.

We have done some of those things already& we have provided additional restrooms, we've provided even more handwashing stations throughout the community for exactly these reasons& officials will now only be allowed to offer information and outreach to those encampments.

City leaders say if this change is not working out -- they can call for an emergency meeting to make adjustments -- ahead of the next city council meeting which is a month out cort