The ordinance is only in draft phase but officials are already taking heat for it. (Photo: Ronda Churchill/Nevada Current)
Attorneys with the Clark County Public Defender’s office implored County Commissioners on Tuesday to abandon efforts to punish unhoused people from sleeping in public areas amid a rising homeless crisis.
Commissioner Tick Segerblom on Tuesday called for an ordinance to restrict “camping and lodging” to crack down on people sleeping in homeless encampments, though didn’t elaborate on what fines or criminal penalties would be included with the ordinance.
The proposal is still in the draft phase and will likely be voted on later this year.
“We can’t punish people into having a place to live,” said Brennan Bartley, an attorney with the public defender’s office. “We can’t punish people into accessing resources, even if those resources are accessible, which all too often they are not.”
The proposal could be similar to an ordinance adopted by the City of Las Vegas in 2019 that restricts sleeping and camping in public if there were emergency shelter beds open and available.
County commissioners criticized the city over its proposal at the time.
Segerblom argued that since 2019, the county has provided more non congregate shelter options, including converting a former Motel 6 into a 70-bed navigation center.
He said people in homeless encampments were being “resistant to services” and unwilling to leave neighborhoods to use these shelter spaces.
“We can offer services and a place to stay,” he said. “Now that we have that ability, it’s important that we have both the carrot and the stick.”
Social service providers have long pushed back on the notion of “service resistant” and said there are barriers to people accessing shelter.
Some shelter spaces don’t allow for pets, have sobriety requirements, and separate spouses, all conditions which could prevent a person from accepting available shelter options.
There also aren’t enough shelter beds or permanent housing options to meet the need.
“To obtain shelter, housing options typically have a significant wait list and housing queues can require waiting 12 to 18 months to contact applicants at the best of time,” said Olivia Miller with the public defender’s office.
Miller added that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development “found in its latest report from 2023 that Nevada is the fifth worst state in terms of providing shelter for the unhoused population.”
The report listed Nevada alongside Oregon, Hawaii, Arizona, Arkansa, Florida and California as having more than half the total unhoused population unsheltered during the 2023 point-in-time count.
The proposed ordinance from the county comes as Southern Nevada has seen a 13-year high of unhoused individuals.
Southern Nevada’s 2024 Point-in-Time Count, an annual snapshot of homelessness on one particular night, identified 7,906 unhoused people, which is a 20% increase from the previous year.
The report, released last month, found Black people are overrepresented in the number of people experiencing homelessness and comprise 42% of those counted.
Along with an increase of families with children experiencing homelessness, the report found an increase among people experiencing homelessness chronically.
Ordinances like the one the county proposed sends the message “to just stop being homeless,” Miller said.
She added with barriers to accessing non congregate shelter or permanent housing, “that message starts to look closer to just stop being.”
Segerblom said if passed, the ordinance would be “just a tool and won’t be used very often.”
The county’s proposal comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that cities that pass anti-camping bans don’t violate the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment even when there is a lack of adequate shelter spaces for the unhoused to go to.
“I recognize the United States Supreme Court has recognized that such a law is legal and constitutional,” Bartley said. “It has that power to say the law is constitutional. It cannot say that a law is just or that a law is right. This law, this ordinance is wrong.”
The county already removes homeless encampments on public property, which it carries out despite not having an ordinance that specifically bans camping.
The only “offense”
Commissioners Marilyn Kirkpatrick, Jim Gibson and William McCurdy all expressed support Tuesday to bring an ordinance forward for discussion.
Kirkpatrick reiterated the county’s efforts to convert motels into non congregate shelter space outside of a typical congregate emergency shelter facility.
She said the ordinance could force people into those services.
“I do think we have to push them to make somewhat harder decisions,” Kirkpatrick said.
Gibson said the ordinance isn’t to simply arrest people “so we get rid of homelessness.”
“It costs us way too much money to just house people in a jail because there is no good place to put them,” he said. “The objective here is to educate them and give them an opportunity to get to a place where they can understand the alternatives.”
Opponents of the proposal disagreed.
“Criminalization is not the solution,” Miller said. “This type of criminalization is a direct path of keeping out of public view and out of public life.”
Meanwhile, Kirkpatrick said the county needs to pressure on state lawmakers, which will meet for the 2025 Legislative Session next year, to ramp up support for mental health services.
She pointed to a proposal to expand Medicaid reimbursement as something the county should push the state to pass.
The City of Las Vegas announced in August it is planning to use one of its bill draft requests to expand Medicaid to pay for respite care for medically fragile unhoused folks.
The city is also planning to bring forward an ordinance this week to expand on existing restrictions on sleeping and campaign in public rights of way. It won’t be voted on until later October.
The proposal would require law enforcement to notify a person they are in violation of the ordinance and services at the Courtyard Homeless Resource Center prior to a citation.
Athar Haseebullah, the executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, said in a statement that the city’s ordinance is just a way to “sweep the homeless population out of sight.”
He warned the ordinance could open law enforcement to “potential civil liability for engaging in stops and arrests they never wanted to touch.”
“Instead of dealing with serious crime or genuine public safety issues, officers are now expected to patrol and arrest people whose only ‘offense’ is not having a roof over their heads,” he said. “This kind of punitive approach erodes trust between the public and the police, pushing the most vulnerable members of our society into the criminal justice system instead of providing real, humane solutions like affordable housing, mental health care, or shelter services.”