SLC weighs expanding its ban on camping to cars and RVs in a move one advocate calls ‘barbaric’

In a major move against unsanctioned camping in Utah’s capital, city leaders are eyeing a formal ban on people living or sleeping overnight in vehicles on public property.

The changes are part of a larger overhaul of the city’s decades-old camping ordinance and come nearly 16 months into Mayor Erin Mendenhall’s latest public safety plan. Among the goals, representatives for the mayor say, is to widen enforcement that has focused until recently on parks to include other public spaces.

Along with people sleeping or camping outdoors, the ordinance would apply to folks bedding down in any kind of vehicle — including RVs and campers — located on public property that is closed for public use between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.

In addition to parks, the new rules would cover park strips, sidewalks, streets and other public spaces, with exceptions for short-term camping along parade routes, when a government property owner grants permission or when the mayor might declare a special emergency.

Enforcement would also be suspended during so-called Code Blue periods, coinciding with the coldest months of the year.

The new ordinance is tentatively set for a public hearing in early May, with a vote by the City Council scheduled later that month.

A ‘tricky’ balance

The existing camping rules have been inconsistently applied over the years, according to Andrew Johnston, the city’s director of homeless policy and outreach. Until now, vehicle camping has mostly been covered by a 48-hour parking rule, leading to uneven or ineffective enforcement, he said.

What’s more, a city ordinance written years ago in part to regulate Boy Scout troops camping in parks and canyons, Johnston said, no longer reflects realities for unsheltered residents today.

“It did not necessarily envision people living in vehicles full time as their place or the number of people without housing finding places to sleep at night,” Johnston said, adding that those numbers have climbed notably in recent years.

But, Johnston warned, striking the right balance on the issue “is tricky.”

“This is hard,” he said. “... We’ve never identified living in a vehicle as camping before.”

The new ordinance, he said, also “is not intended to solve homelessness,” as the city faces key shortages of overnight beds and transitional housing that have not been “fully addressed.”

“We are working very hard in other avenues and other entities and organizations to do that,” Johnston said.

And rather than punishing people for using public spaces, he said, the overhaul is intended “to dissuade people from camping in those places overnight or doing things that are camp-related.”

‘Horrible’ enforcement under parking rules

According to the mayor’s office, the expanded prohibitions would be “but one tool” to help police counter the adverse effects of camping on public health, safety and access to public spaces.

“This is not intended as a punitive enforcement tool to be used against unhoused individuals,” Mendenhall’s senior staffers wrote to council members. “It is the city’s goal to ensure these public spaces are equally accessible to all residents and visitors of the city.”

Kent Mayberry, longtime resident of Rose Park, said enforcement against vehicle camping near his home under the city’s existing parking rules “has been horrible.” He and other west-side residents have complained for years about trash, wastewater and disruption coming from clusters of RVs and rundown cars parked for weeks along their streets.

“I expect better from the city,” Mayberry said. “I’m 100% sure if this was on the east side, say, near the mayor’s house or somebody like that, the problem would have been solved a long time ago.”

Similar enclaves of vehicle campers have been a common site in recents years along multiple highway corridors and viaducts, near Fairmont Park and other green spaces, and along stretches by the Jordan River.

Mayberry and other concerned neighbors, though, warned about stepping up enforcement when the city still lacks adequate resources to help homeless residents otherwise.

“Instead of addressing the problem,” Mayberry said, “we’re just moving the problem through the city.”

Would new rules ‘criminalize’ homelessness?

The draft ordinance is also drawing dire concern from those helping unsheltered residents.

Bill Tibbitts with Crossroads Urban Center, which supplies relief and advocacy to unsheltered Utahns, said many people who are briefly without a home “get through that period by sleeping in their cars for a few days” while staying gainfully employed and without using shelter services.

“Criminal charges could change that,” he said. “Losing a job and then losing a car because they cannot maintain the costs puts someone in a much worse place than they were in before.”

Michelle Flynn, executive director for The Road Home, a Salt Lake City-based operator of shelter and housing services, said her group was “in a learning phase” on the ordinance and whether it would increase pressure on area shelters.

“Without new housing or shelter resources,” Flynn said in a statement, “more people may turn to our doors and cycle through services without achieving stability.”

Nomad Alliance, a street-level provider of food, medical aid and temporary shelter to the homeless, operates a mobile shelter bus that offers warmth and a place to sleep in winter months for up to 24 people per night. Its executive director, Kseniya Kniazeva, said she was “flabbergasted” at the proposed changes, which she called “barbaric.”

In addition to potentially adding burdens for many unsheltered residents while they’re in crisis, the new ordinance, Kniazeva added, would probably make using the group’s so-called Blue Bus illegal, at least without a sanctioned place to park it regularly.

“Way to beat someone when they’re down,” she said. “Instead of supporting innovative shelter like mobile safe spaces, the city is criminalizing the only options people actually have.”

Kniazeva and Tibbitts both said the city does not currently provide any locations where vehicle campers can legally park overnight, while large city-owned parking lots go unused.

More citations, more arrests predicted

Council Chair Alejandro Puy, whose west-side district spans Fairpark, Glendale, Poplar Grove and portions of downtown, has voiced similar concerns over the move, shared by several council colleagues.

“I do worry this is too close to criminalizing the homeless,” Puy said. “What I think it is going to happen — and I hope I’m wrong — is more citations, more people getting into struggling with the system because of those citations, and maybe some of them even getting arrested.”

Puy and others on the council are calling for regular training for police to ensure enforcement is nuanced and selective, should the new ordinance pass. “I want to make sure,” he said, “there are clear expectations and boundaries [reflecting] the values of the city.”

Eva Lopez Chavez, whose district centers on downtown, said folks living in their vehicles as a last resort “are constituents and still have jobs, still have families as they try to meet their needs.”

She and others are calling for robust social service support for those encountering the police and “a policy that really builds a pipeline” toward providing them contacts for services and transitional and permanent supportive housing.

“If we’re going to remove this option from them,” she said of car camping, “I want to make sure that we’re not just exposing them back into the elements.”