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[Tuesday] night, Berkeley City Council voted six to three to instruct the City Manager to produce recommendations on eleven different proposals concerning homelessness. Six of these would be criminal sanctions for everyday activities. No new law has been passed, or can be passed prior to a future City Council vote on the City Manager's recommendations.

Elisa Della-Piana, Chair of the Homeless Commission, was disappointed by the lack of community process. "Berkeley has a Homeless Commission that was formed to vet and produce such proposals. The hours spent in Tuesday's meeting were a waste of time that showed no respect for the expertise available in this city from our service providers, the Homeless Commission, the Homeless Taskforce, or one of the best schools of social work in the state. We hope that the City Manager will consult with these bodies so that City Council has better information and more rationally formed proposals in front of them when they give this matter its second consideration." 

Dan McMullan, Chair of the Mental Health Commission, agreed. "Much of what the City Council was trying to address last night are the symptoms of a system that is still failing to adequately address some of the more severe mental health needs in our community. Councilmember Maio, who drafted this proposal, knows that incarceration is detrimental to people with mental health challenges, and ran partially on a platform of improved mental health services this past November. We would like to see her consult with the Commission about positive steps Berkeley can take to better serve people in crisis, rather than resort to failed policies she already knows don't work." 

Service providers and homeless community members were also frustrated by the lack of process. Bob Offer-Westort, who has worked with homeless youth for two years and who organized the campaign against 2012's Measure S, said, "After 2012, Councilmember Jesse Arreguín convened a community process to inform Berkeleyans about homeless policy and to develop recommendations for how the City could best move forward. In April, that body will make a whole slate of well-considered proposals that have been formed with input from homeless people and service providers. I think it's insulting that the proponents of this measure have chosen not to participate in the community process, and have chosen not to speak with the people who know the most about homelessness in Berkeley." 

The proposal was drafted by the Downtown Berkeley Association, a landlords' lobbying group that focuses on drawing consumers to the Shattuck commercial corridor. Attorney Osha Neumann said, "We're seeing the Downtown Berkeley Association yet again push the interests of landlords over small businesses by scapegoating homeless people to distract the public from the issue of exorbitant commercial rents. They've pushed law after law to criminalize homelessness over the years, but none of this has achieved anything but a deepening divide between the haves and have-nots in Berkeley. All research as well as our everyday experience shows that putting homeless people in jail does nothing to get people off the streets or support local businesses. About half of the small business public speakers at last night's meeting were opposed to this foolhardy measure." 

The Streets Are For Everyone Coalition (SAFE) has committed to fight criminalization of homeless people, and to engage in a actual consultative community process that involves homeless people, service providers, small businesses, and legal professionals.