A bill sponsored by Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson, would require cities and town to demolish encampments on private land and charge people living there with trespassing.
By Kylie Werner Cronkite News PHOENIX – David King sits on the couch where he sleeps across the street from the Human Services Campus and watches as people walk in and out of the campus shelters. The tents that line the streets surrounding the shelters house a community of people all struggling from the same problem: homelessness.
Under Arizona SB 1413, King and the other people living outside the shelters would have their homes dismantled. The bill requires cities and towns to tear down homeless encampments and charge the person or people living there with trespassing if they’re on private property. “Nobody should walk outside their four-star restaurant and find human feces in their front doorstep,” Wadsack said, noting business owners have raised issues of having to come in before their employees in order to clean up human waste, trash and encampments. Private homeowners have complained about homeless people living in their arroyos and back alleys, she said.
“Let’s address rent costs, let’s address not enough housing, let’s address not enough shelter space, not enough wrap-around services,” Hernandez said. “Let’s look at why these things are happening and put resources into that, and then we wouldn’t see these problems.
King said the Senate bill is unfair to him and others who are unhoused and that there are other solutions. “Some people lost their jobs, their homes, their families, so just putting them in jails and taking away their home that they have now wouldn’t be a good solution,” she said.
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