Editor, Manteca Bulletin,

Thinking our city leaders were working to find a way to assist the homeless in our city was a pipe dream. It’s apparent that the homeless summit, put on by the Chief of Police, was a smoke screen, lip service if you will, in order to give the City time to quickly pass a couple of city Ordinances that allows our police department to harass the homeless in an effort to get them to move on to neighboring towns or anywhere USA that is not Manteca. 

The City’s Homeless Summit appeared to be a preliminary effort to determine what resources were available in town for our homeless population and what could be done to address the issue and help solve the problems. If you attended it, you soon realized that there are no services for our homeless single male and female adults without children and not enough for couples and single adults with children. Conspicuously missing was any discussion about what could be done to remedy this sad fact! The Chief ended the summit with a statement about following up with another summit in January or February of next year to discuss what positive effects the Oct. 29 summit had had on the City’s homeless problems. This must have been a joke, right? How could there be any positive outcomes when there had been no changes put in place and not even any discussion about how to address the needs of the homeless locally. 

On Oct. 21 the Chief of Police introduced two proposed new Ordinances to the City Council for actions against the homeless, even though he had scheduled a Homeless Summit for the following week, supposedly to come up with ways to address the issue of homelessness. Last Tuesday night the City Council unanimously approved those two new Ordinances. They go into effect effective Dec. 4. Ordinance 1550 duplicates a state one about no urinating or defecating in public. Ordinance 1551 gives the City the authority to cite or arrest any person who sleeps outside or in a vehicle, whether on public or private property and without the approval of the property owner. 

Though, it should not be legal to urinate or defecate in public, the City and most business owners have taken away other options for the homeless. The City is now locking public restrooms to keep the homeless out of them and most businesses frown upon homeless entering their establishments. It is inhumane to have no place for any human being to take care of their private business. Additionally, every human being should be able to find a place to sleep. Our city leaders have decided these are “rights” only afforded to residents who have a roof over their heads. 

The homeless cannot legally be told to leave Manteca or physically removed by taking them to the city limits and told not to return. So, city leaders have decided to direct our police officers to harass them in an effort to get them to leave town on their own and will prosecute them repeatedly, creating a couple or a hundred “Godzilla” type (repeat arrests and prosecutions with fines, at a minimum) . 

On Channel 10 News last Friday, the Chief of Police made this clear when he told KXTV’s Suzanne Phan, “the goal is to correct the wrong. So, if the correction is them (homeless) leaving Manteca, then that’s their choice.” He also informed the reporter that he opposes any sort of shelter. Lastly, even though the City will be spending our tax dollars to arrest, cite and prosecute the homeless, he admitted that the homeless won’t be jailed and likely won’t pay their fines.

The City of Manteca has taken this too far!

Where is the outrage of our citizen population over the city’s actions? Are we not the “Family City”? Do we have no love or caring to help our brother/sister in need? Do we, including our City leaders, talk the talk, but fail to walk the walk when we see another in need, but close our eyes and ears to them? How can we turn our backs when others have needs? Are we going to sit idly by and allow our City to mistreat our neediest of residents? 

I, for one, will do what I can to help! However, change cannot be accomplished by one person. It will take joint efforts by our City government, businesses, churches and non-profit assistance groups to help our poor and homeless.

Sharon Herrera

Manteca