It’s been more than 18 months since the City of Lathrop outlawed public camping within the city limits.
But after a series of lawsuits that claimed that such ordinances are unconstitutional because they “outlaw homelessness” the city has amended its municipal code to reflect the changes that came out of those lawsuits – including the one that was filed against the City of Manteca for enacting a similar law.
On Monday the council approved a major change to the municipal code that will allow camping in public from the hours of 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. – preventing legal challenges that could be costly to fight in court.
The new ordinance also observes private property rights of those who are camping publicly, and now requires up to a 72-hour notification before anything is removed or cleared out of an encampment or space – unless exigent circumstances are present. Those circumstances are defined as “any emergency situation requiring swift action to prevent imminent danger to the health, safety, or life of a person or serious damage to property or to forestall the imminent escape of a suspect or destruction of evidence or maintain public or private right of access to sidewalks, utility easements, streets, roads, trails, levees and designated parking areas.”
In the event that something is taken under the exigent circumstance clause, the city must then store it for 90 days from the date of removal, unless it includes government-issued identification, which must be kept for a year.
The City of Manteca was sued by a group of homeless individuals after the city’s ordinance drew widespread criticism from both the homeless community and advocates both inside and outside of the community – going viral online and generating a fair amount of discussion as to whether the ordinance, which essentially outlawed all camping at all times throughout the city, was in fact legal or even ethical.
Some in the homeless community complained about returning to encampments, where all of their things had been stored, to discover that it had been razed – with all of their possessions being taken away without any notification.
Various government entities enforced the law – including Caltrans, who has been busy dealing with the growing issue of encampments along the right-of-way of the Highway 120 Bypass and even Highway 99.