Illegal seizure?

After losing their apartment in 2023, New York City residents Gerald Bethel and Trese Chapman lined all their worldly possessions against the side of a vacant building and set up camp, sleeping beneath construction scaffolding. That is, until this June, when city workers told the couple to leave the area and dumped many of their belongings into a garbage truck.

Bethel and Chapman are two of six named homeless plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit accusing New York City of violating homeless individuals’ constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure. The Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center filed the complaint in federal court Oct. 29.

When he took office in 2022, New York Mayor Eric Adams pledged to clean up the encampments encumbering city sidewalks and subway stations. During camp cleanups, known as sweeps, city policy directs agencies to use their “best efforts” to store eligible items in free, temporary storage units for up to 90 days and provide homeless people with vouchers to reclaim their possessions.

But that isn’t what usually happens, the lawsuit claims. Bethel and Chapman, who experienced dozens of sweeps—losing shoes, blankets, hygiene products, family photographs, and other personal effects—say the city never offered to store their possessions. “Instead, sweeps teams throw homeless residents’ belongings in a sanitation truck and summarily destroy them with the trucks’ compactors,” their complaint states.

Other cities are fighting similar lawsuits. In San Francisco, a federal judge ruled in August that the city may only continue camp cleanups if it better trains city workers on storing homeless people’s belongings.

The New York lawsuit claims the city conducted over 11,500 sweeps between October 2021 and June 2024. New York officials argue the cleanups are essential for connecting the homeless with shelter options and removing unsanitary and hazardous structures.

Ringo Chiu via AP

Votes against public blight

Voters in Arizona and California on Election Day resoundingly approved ballot measures that proponents argue will help communities move more homeless people indoors.

California’s Proposition 36 reforms a 2014 ballot measure that downgraded simple drug possession and petty theft of goods worth $950 or less from a felony to a misdemeanor. Critics said the earlier Prop 47 helped fuel a 51 percent spike in homelessness.

The state’s new measure creates a “treatment-mandated felony,” allowing courts to bring felony charges to bear once an individual has committed a drug possession or shoplifting offense for the third time. An offender who completes a drug or mental health treatment program becomes eligible to have his conviction expunged.

Arizona voters simultaneously passed Prop 312, which permits property owners to request a refund from their city for damages incurred as a result of local officials failing to enforce public nuisance laws, including those against illegal camping or public drug use. —A.O.