Tell City of Redding NOT to enact anti-homeless ordinance!

Recently, the City of Redding council voted to push forward an anti-homeless ordinance which would enable RPD to cite and/or arrest people for “camping”. It would allow them to interrogate homeless people as to why they are not at the Good News Rescue Mission, the city’s only shelter which, aside from being a religious organization, is plagued by overcrowding & unsafe conditions, and enacts a “30 day in and out” policy. We, the People of Redding, DO NOT agree with the city’s criminalization of the homeless and an ordinance that amounts to nothing short of class warfare. We will NOT turn on our fellow working class citizens who happen to be homeless because we know all too well how many of us here in Redding are no more than a paycheck or two away from being in the same boat. When Redding Electric Utility charges exorbitant shut-off and reconnection fees on top of already sky high utility charges, when our city has only one shelter and minimal mental health & rehabilitation services, when our city does so little to combat so many of the issues that make people vulnerable to homelessness in the first place, it becomes UP TO US to see to it that the city is held accountable, and not the folks it failed to help or support to begin with.

These so-called “quality of life sweeps” — citing people for existing while homeless — are counterintuitive; not only are most folks unable to pay these citations, but it only serves to push them further into the poverty hole and make them less likely to seek out. To prosecute the homeless for sleeping in public when there's a lack of shelter space amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. And while the council argues that Redding’s one shelter has never been at capacity, their point is irrelevant, if even true.