Fresno advocates worry the city’s new task force will ‘criminalize’ homeless residents

Advocates greeted Fresno’s latest plan to address homelessness with skepticism this week, questioning whether the city’s latest effort would “criminalize” people who live outside.

But city leaders said the newly designated Homeless Assistance Response Team, or HART, would be a more “compassionate” and “humanitarian” response to addressing street homelessness that would also be more effective than prior task force efforts.

“You’re going to see homelessness reduced,” said Councilmember Luis Chavez.

Mayor Jerry Dyer said his goal is to “minimize” law enforcement’s role in the city’s effort with the unhoused population.

The HART team is a multi-departmental team made up of staff from Poverello House, Fresno police, and the city’s code enforcement division.

The new team will help connect the unhoused population with resources and shelter, when available, and clean up encampments on both public and private property.

But, speaking out during Thursday’s regular Fresno City Council meeting, advocates — as well as some members of the city council — questioned how the new team would work.

“People are just being shuffled around,” said Robert McCloskey, a homeless advocate, during Thursday’s meeting. “Everybody knows there are no shelter beds available, so let’s please quit playing this game about shelter beds because there are none.”

“I’m really concerned with the new HART team and pray it’ll work,” said Cindy Piombino of Christ Helping Hands outreach ministry. “I’m very disappointed no advocates were contacted for input.”

In a similar vein, City Councilmember Miguel Arias said he was concerned about the program and noted that HART was “created by administrative staff without input from the council.”

How will Fresno’s new HART team work?

An estimated 700 people live in approximately 64 encampments in Fresno, according to city officials. They also say these encampments invite crime and are dangerous to those who reside in them.

HART’s first goal is to connect the unhoused population with resources and support to help get them off the street, and when available, to shelter beds. The Poverello House’s 18-member “HOPE Team” will serve as the HART Team’s outreach branch, which will spread across the city on a rotating basis to reach the city’s unhoused residents.

The second goal of HART is to resolve “quality of life issues” affecting residents and businesses near encampments, said Director of Housing and Homelessness Services H Spees.

During his presentation to the city council, Spees said the HART team is trying to balance the “two extremes” of affirming the human dignity of the unhoused population and addressing the concerns of the surrounding residents and businesses.

HART will include 10 full-time code enforcement staff to address large encampments of 10 or more people on public and private property.

Encampment cleanups on either public or private property will receive a 10-day notice to give people time to clear the area, city officials say.

If there are no shelter beds available and an encampment is located on public property, the HART team will pick up trash, pressure wash, and make sure the conditions are safe, said Mayor Jerry Dyer on Tuesday. Then, the unhoused will be able to relocate to the cleaned site.

Anyone who wishes to request HART services or has inquiries about encampments is asked to call 311.

During Thursday’s presentation, City Councilmembers Tyler Maxwell and Arias said they were concerned about the extra step that working through the HART team would create for their council district administrations in communicating with constituents about progress on cleaning up encampments.

“Council offices are the first point of contact in the homeless crisis in Fresno. We’re the ones that get the first phone call about an encampment,” said Arias.

“It’s a whole extra step that we have to go through the 311 to see what the progress is…and then get back to our residents on how that problem’s been solved or has not been resolved,” said Maxwell, who added that he thinks there’s going to be a lot of confusion and misinformation with the new team.

Homeless advocates criticized the new team.

“The HART Team is basically wasting taxpayer dollars in this game of whack-a-mole,” said Tower resident Lisa Flores. “Obviously, there’s something really going wrong in the system, and I kind of think it’s H (Spees) and his viewpoint of how he views the homeless.”

Andrea Gillo said she would “really like to see more housing-first policies.”

“Your HART initiative doesn’t seem to have much heart,” Gillo said.

Others spoke in favor of safe camps, tiny homes, and mobile sanitary showers to assist Fresno’s unhoused population.

The city has purchased two mobile sanitation and shower units, which city officials say should be available by late February.

Will police be arresting the homeless?

Sgt. Steve Jaquez oversees the police department’s HART team division of six officers, who were chosen based on their ability to show “a good deal of compassion and care and maturity” in dealing with the unhoused community.

The primary goal of the police department’s HART team, said Jaquez, is to ensure safety during the cleanups and mitigate impact to both public and private parties.

However, the team also has “enforcement options that we will exercise when we need to,” said Jaquez, who said the team would try to temper enforcement action. “Not every person that is having some sort of crisis needs to be dealt with in arrest,” he said.

Dyer said this new approach is “totally different” from the homelessness task force which was created under his direction as former police chief and which he said had “proved to be ineffective.”

The homeless task force was disbanded over a year ago after body camera footage showed police removing homeless individuals from an encampment.

“Honestly, I’m trying desperately as a mayor to minimize the involvement of our police officers in the area of homelessness and the area of mental health,” Dyer said.

He said city leadership is working on a “long-term strategy” to respond to mental health calls. Currently, there is a crisis intervention partnership between the Fresno County Department of Behavioral Health and police officers that co-responds to incidents, but only during standard business hours.

In response to a question on whether the team has behavior or mental health specialists, Poverello House Chief Executive Officer Zachary Darrah said the team had received “very specialized training that involved engaging individuals experiencing homelessness.”

Darrah added that the team also has clinical resources at Poverello House, as well as access to Fresno’s crisis intervention team services.

Community organizer Pedro Navarro Cruz said that Fresno’s police reform commission recommended against dispatching police for nonviolent mental health calls and called for more training for dispatchers to recognize calls with mental health or behavioral health needs.

City council members said they would give the new HART team “patience” and a few months of a grace period as they work out the initial implementation of the HART team.

Melissa Montalvo is a reporter with The Fresno Bee and a Report for America corps member. This article is part of The California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequity and economic survival in California.

This story was originally published January 30, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Fresno advocates worry the city’s new task force will ‘criminalize’ homeless residents."