Joel Berdie, who runs S.O.L. Community Health in Durango, said the city’s code enforcement operations are at odds with community efforts to support the city’s homeless population.
Speaking during Durango City Council’s public participation segment of its Tuesday meeting, Berdie said police cleared a camp along the Animas River south of the Ninth Street Bridge of homeless residents’ belongings and dumped them in the garbage earlier that same morning.
Among the items lost were a down comforter, Sorel boots worth $200, an emergency blanket and personal paperwork, he said.
“This is all gear that folks have been accruing over months,” he said. “These individuals immediately went into crisis. I’ve been on and off the phone with these individuals today completing actual homicidal assessments. Everyone is safe and accounted for this evening.”
Steve Barkley, city code enforcement officer, said on Thursday the procedure for collecting potentially abandoned property is to place an abandoned camp notice at a campsite if no one is around to claim the items. The notice amounts to a 24-hour warning that if the owner doesn’t move the property it can be considered abandoned.
“When we return after 24 hours-plus, nobody’s there, it looks like everything’s the same, it is collected up and disposed of as abandoned property,” he said.
Barkley said a city ordinance disallows leaving personal property in the city’s open spaces during daylight hours.
“If the person wants to retain that stuff they need to take it with them,” he said. “If they fail to remove it and take it with them it can be considered abandoned. But once again, we usually tag that stuff for 24 hours.”
For the homeless residents whose belongings were discarded, it was traumatizing and their PTSD reactions were triggered, Berdie told City Council.
He said he has been in contact with the Durango Police Department, which told him officers are enforcing the city’s orders.
“To enforce a so-called camping ban, it is detracting from any of the work that providers are getting to do during the daytime when we are there to form connections,” he said.
Berdie said police cleared the camp between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m., hours when many homeless residents gather at Manna soup kitchen to warm up and get food.
“Folks come up there to heal, to find sanctuary, to feel safe,” he said. “... All of their belongings were not sorted through, they were simply all discarded into a dumpster.”
He said homeless residents have been forced to camp near the river because the city has provided them nowhere else to go.
Barkley said police store some items if they appear to be in use. The police department has held onto one camp’s belongings for over a day now, waiting to see if the owner or owners will come to claim the items. If nobody shows up to take the property, it will be disposed of.
“One of the camps that we collected up the other day, we did receive information from the owner and it was returned to him. We try to do what we can with these folks,” he said.
Berdie said police told him they “have their hands behind their back” because they don’t know where to send homeless residents. The least the city can do is allow people to keep “minimal survival gear” and “vital documents,” and collaborate with the unhoused and support groups when camp sweeps must occur.
Barkley said police do communicate with homeless residents about open rooms and services supplied by organizations such as Volunteers of America, although those services are dependent on availability.
“If there’s nothing available then unfortunately, we as an officer cannot – well, we could if we were independently wealthy – put them up in a hotel,” he said. “But that’s something that personally I cannot do.”
If there isn’t availability with third-party services, officers don’t cite unhoused residents for trespassing, he said.
Berdie mentioned that homeless residents affected by the sweep on Tuesday morning were in crisis.
“We try to work in a positive attitude with the houseless versus being aggressive or randomly throwing away stuff just to irritate people, shall we say,” Barkley said. “We’re not out there to do that. They’re in a bad situation and we’re not there to make it worse. We’re just trying to take care of what laws (people) are breaking and try to make the community safe and healthy.”
He said camps along the Animas River are cause for health and safety concern because of the potential for trash and human and animal waste to be dumped into the river and washed downstream.
When code enforcement officers do dispose of a camp, they don’t rummage through belongings, he said. They roll the property up and dispose of it. If the site appears to be active, officers will tag the camp and continually check on it.
Two camps are still present in the area; two others moved to another location; and one was deemed abandoned and disposed of on Tuesday, he said.
cburney@durangoherald.com
