Duluth City Council takes ‘criminal penalty’ out of homelessness ordinance

The Duluth City Council has passed an amended version of a controversial proposal to crack down on public camping that backers say does not criminalize homelessness. 

By a 5-4 vote after a meeting Monday night that stretched nearly seven hours, the council opted to make camping on city property an “ordinance violation” with a maximum fine of $200, rather than a misdemeanor crime that could have resulted in jail time.

Less than eight hours after the council meeting ended, Duluth police announced Tuesday that they told dozens of people camping near City Hall they had one week to leave and remove their belongings, because of escalating public health and safety concerns.

Council passes amended ordinance

During Monday night’s marathon meeting, City Council President Roz Randorf, one of the co-sponsors of the amended ordinance, said it “takes the criminal penalty out while also maintaining the authority to have someone move to a safer place.”

The council also passed a resolution “reaffirming the city’s support for those experiencing homelessness,” and recommended that the city allocate $500,000 to help build a triage center to provide emergency shelter for people experiencing homelessness and help connect them to services. 

The measures were among several ordinances pushed by Duluth Mayor Roger Reinert to address a host of public safety and quality-of-life issues the city says make up the bulk of complaints and calls for service, including graffiti, property crimes, defacing the city skywalk system and blocking streets and sidewalks. 

Many of those ordinances made those activities misdemeanor crimes — a tool that Duluth police did not previously have, Reinert said. He said that was out of step with other regional centers around the state.

But it was the proposal to make public camping a misdemeanor crime, with potential penalties of up to 90 days in jail and a fine of up to $1,000, that generated the majority of community discussion.

Such a proposal was made possible by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that cities can legally ban people from sleeping and camping in public places. Earlier this year the Rochester City Council passed an ordinance making public camping a misdemeanor crime. 

Critics, including dozens of people who addressed the council for nearly four hours Monday night, blasted the proposal, arguing it is not a crime to not have a home. 

They also said it did not address the root causes driving homelessness in Duluth and elsewhere, including a lack of shelter space and affordable housing. 

In response to those concerns, four councilors proposed amending the ordinance to make public camping punishable by only a fine. 

“For me, personally, the community’s feedback on this resonated with me,” explained council member Arik Forsman, who co-authored the amendment. He said in the future they could reconsider the ordinance when Duluth has more shelter beds available. 

“But I didn’t feel comfortable moving forward with the misdemeanor piece at this time,” Forsman said.

Some council member weren’t comfortable with a $200 fine, either. 

“I think that passing any sort of punitive measure is not the answer,” said council member Wendy Durrwachter, acknowledging that addressing the homelessness crisis is a slow-going process. 

“I know a lot of people are losing their patience,” she said. 

Encampment update

On Tuesday morning, Duluth police notified people camping in Priley Circle — the area in the center of the complex that includes City Hall, the St. Louis County Courthouse and the federal courthouse — that they had to leave.

“The Life Safety Team will continue to coordinate with Community Outreach Programs to assist those during the transition period,” the city said in a news release.

The encampment began several weeks ago as a pro-Palestinian gathering, but quickly grew to include primarily people experiencing homelessness. People camping there said they came when they realized the city wasn’t evacuating people.

Micheal Evans, who said he’d been camping there for a month, said he appreciated the camaraderie. He enjoyed “eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, and getting together and going to the food shelf and picking up food and bringing it back,” he said.

But he also said there were a lot of fights and conflict at the encampment. While packing up his tent, Evans said he hoped to find shelter in an unused parking ramp.

Francois Medoin, who said he’d been camping in the circle for about a week, said he woke up to see signs staked into the ground around the encampment, telling them they had one week to vacate.

“They keep telling us, ‘You have to move, you have to move.’ But we have no place to go. None,” said Medoin.

“The only thing we need is a place and we’ll take care of everything,” Medoin continued. “We need a place to stay that we’re not going to be expelled. That’s all we need. And the place has to be close to downtown. Because all the services are here,” he said.

While Medoin spoke, Lisa Ronnquist, a volunteer working to help people experiencing homelessness, walked through the camp, telling people to leave by the following day.

She said they had places lined up for some people to go. “But they can’t be all grouped together like this,” she said.

Triage Center

The measure to allocate an additional $500,000 in funding for a triage center, which the city council passed on an 8-1 vote Monday, is intended to help meet that need for emergency shelter space.

A triage facility, along with sanctioned outdoor sleeping space, is a key component of an initiative launched by a coalition of 10 community service organizations in Duluth called Stepping on Up, a five-year effort to combat homelessness in the city. 

With the $500,000 pledged by the city council, the organizations would only be about $400,000 short in raising the $2.1 million needed to build the triage center. 

“With this vote, the council cannot communicate any more clearly that we want this project done, we need it,” said Randorf. “Ticketing is not the answer.” 

Despite the additional funding, groups pushing for the center have not been able to secure a place to build it. 

“We couldn’t get the city to budge, either the previous administration, or this one, about us getting city land,” said John Cole, executive director of Chum, the largest shelter in Duluth. 

Cole said a recent Supreme Court ruling has also taken county tax-forfeited land off the table. 

In a letter to Reinert, Cole and other leaders of social service organizations expressed concerns about the ordinances and the potential consequences of a “punitive approach” to homelessness. 

Those groups also criticized city officials for not consulting with them prior to releasing the proposals last month. 

But speaking after the hours of public comments at Monday’s council meeting, Reinert said there was consultation. 

“It happened last year in the form of an election,” he said, during which he said he consistently talked about public safety during debates and forums. 

Reinert said it shouldn’t have been a surprise that his administration proposed these public safety changes. 

“They represent the issues Duluthians most often call and say they want addressed,” Reinert said. “And they also represent the issues our public safety team most often attempts to address.”

Several downtown business owners and executives from Essentia Health who work downtown spoke in favor of the public safety package, including measures to make graffiti and blocking passage on sidewalks and streets misdemeanor offenses. 

“Quality-of-life issues in our downtown have exploded over the last few years, making it a challenge for the economic vitality of our businesses, from drug use, smoking and needles, to defecating in doorways and graffiti plastered across buildings,” said Kristi Stokes, president of Downtown Duluth. 

“These are things that are hard for me to share publicly. But there comes a time when we need to rip off the Band-Aid and really share and acknowledge the challenges that we are facing,” Stokes said. 

Representatives of community service organizations acknowledged those public safety concerns, and asked for support to provide the services needed to address homelessness. 

“We hope that these past few weeks represent the beginning of conversations towards revitalized partnerships and real solutions,” said Cole, executive director of Chum.

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