Boulder City Council Heeds Call for No-Camping Moratorium

by Josie Raymond · 2010-01-20 14:15:00 UTC
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Update 1/26/2010: Mayor Osborne is backsliding on her promise to review a moratorium on camping tickets, saying she felt "boxed in" by petitioners and protestors. Read the open letter to the mayor and keep the pressure on!

Update 2/3/2010: Unfortunately, the mayor and city council of Boulder decided not to institute a moratorium. Activists on the ground are not giving up. You please don't either.

Update 6/28/2010: The ACLU has filed suit against Boulder on behalf of a homeless man who turned away from the local shelter and them ticketed for using a sleeping bag in 11 degree weather. The end of this unfair ordinance could be near —with your continued support.

Yesterday, End Homelessness blogger Noah Jennings asked for your help in defeating a Boulder, Colorado ordinance that fines homeless people for sleeping outdoors in a city without enough shelter beds. You delivered.

Boulder Mayor Susan Osborne told Change.org yesterday -- just hours after the call to action went up -- that she had received hundreds of e-mails on the issue from around the world and was adding it to last night's City Council meeting agenda. "Supposedly nobody has gotten ticketed for camping alone," Osborne told us yesterday, pointing to citations for public urination and fighting. "But I think it's pretty obvious that things have reached a crisis point" concerning the homeless in Boulder.

When council members showed up for the meeting, they were met by 60 protesters, including many homeless people who have received the tickets. During the portion of the meeting in which the public is invited to speak, activists explained how the law harms the homeless and made affecting pleas for a moratorium. The city council stepped up and directed the city manager to prepare an emergency ordinance suspending enforcement of the camping ticket regulation.

The ordinance that allows police to issue $100 fines to people found sleeping outdoors has been in place since 1980. From 2005 to August 2009, the city issued 1,583 camping tickets. Only 149 of these tickets were paid. Instead, violators of this law who were unable to pay the fine spent a total of 1,516 nights in jail.

We applaud Mayor Osborne and the Boulder City Council for their willingness to reevaluate an unfair law. Keep the pressure on to be sure they follow through.

Photo credit: Marty Caivano/The Daily Camera

Josie Raymond is a Change.org editor who has reported from the streets of the South Bronx, written for several magazines that folded (not her fault) and fixed thousands of typos.

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