HOMELESS IN TRAVERSE CITY: Townships evict homeless; not so in city

Nov. 12—TRAVERSE CITY — On a chilly Saturday morning in April 2021, more than 50 volunteers descended on a series of ramshackle homeless encampments next to and below the Goodwill Inn in Garfield Township.

Carrying grabbers and 55-gallon trash bags, the volunteers hauled out a staggering six tons of trash that day, including a sodden stew of sleeping bags, tents, mattresses, clothing, empty food cans and liquor bottles, and hundreds of discarded syringes.

"It was pretty disgusting," said Derek Morton, Garfield Township's code enforcement officer. "Campers had constructed a makeshift porta-john out of pallets and buckets. It was not sanitary."

Fed up with the campers' trashing of township property, township officials began the process of shutting down the encampments permanently. Citing Michigan's Public Health Code, Department of Natural Resources camping regulations and Garfield Township's parkland ordinance, the township plastered "no camping" signs throughout the bottomlands, renamed the property the River East Recreation Area and demanded that Goodwill Inn officials stop the homeless from camping on the Inn's property, which exists under a special use permit issued by the township.

Dissatisfied with the response of Dan Buron, the executive director of Goodwill Northern Michigan, the township also took the Goodwill Inn to court, accusing the Inn in October 2021 of allowing homeless people to camp on Goodwill property without a permit.

Although the Goodwill Inn ultimately prevailed in the case when then-86th District Judge Robert A. Cooney ruled that the Inn did not "offer" camping as a traditional campground would, but had permitted homeless people to camp outside, the township ultimately succeeded in its quest to shut down the encampments.

Doing so displaced approximately 30 homeless people, according to Ryan Hannon, a homeless advocate who serves as Goodwill's community engagement officer. With nowhere else to go, many of those people relocated to the city, Hannon said, pitching tents in homeless encampments like the Pines, the squalid tent city that sits along Division Street in the shadow of the Village at Grand Traverse Commons.

"It just pushed people into the city, which is what they (Garfield Township officials) want," he said.

Some people wonder why Traverse City officials haven't followed Garfield Township's lead by enforcing a policy that bans people from camping on city parkland.

"They are not suppose [sic] to camp on public parkland and they are using our public parkland for a toilet and not one damn person in this city will do anything about it," a furious 11th Street resident wrote to city commissioners in July. "We (you) have no obligation to furnish them with a place to camp so you don't run their (expletive) out of there. I don't believe this and you need to send me the law that says cities must furnish homeless people a place to camp if you remove them from their current location."

The law that has prevented cities across the country from evicting homeless people who are living on public land is Martin v. Boise, a decision that was issued in 2018 by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. That ruling, which the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear on appeal, found that homeless residents in Boise, Idaho, could not be punished for sleeping outside on public property if they had nowhere else to go.

"The government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise that they had a choice in the matter," the court ruled.

City Attorney Lauren Trible-Laucht has advised Traverse City officials that, based on the Boise case and a companion ruling by a federal judge in Cincinnati, evicting homeless people from public property violates the 1st, 4th, 8th and 14th amendments of the Constitution and exposes the city to legal liability. In a memo that she sent to then-Police Chief Jeff O'Brien in June, Trible-Laucht wrote that police "should refrain from participating in enforcement activities that could run afoul of the constitutional provisions therein described."

Asked why the city is adhering to a different legal standard than Garfield Township, Trible-Laucht said, "I don't know what opinions were given to them by their legal counsel, but I think the city has approached it in a different way. ... There's a risk analysis. If we cleared the camps, it brings a risk to the city."

She also posed this question: "Is there a benefit to just moving people around at the end of the day?"

Traverse City Mayor Richard Lewis and Commissioner Mi Stanley said they wholeheartedly agree with the city's legal posture. Lewis said the issue is personal to him.

"One paycheck away and my mother and her three boys could have been in the same way," he said, adding: "I'm pleased that the city commission has shown compassion and caring."

NOT IN OUR BACK YARD

Supervisors in Garfield, Acme and Paradise townships — all of whom have asked the DNR or their community police officers to remove homeless people found camping on state land in the townships — said they are simply following state law and local ordinances.

"Typically, the process is to notify, first, that what they're doing is a violation and if they're still there 24 hours later, we move things up to a higher level," said Garfield Township Supervisor Chuck Korn. "We tell them that there's going to be some legal action if they don't move and, at that point, the vast majority take off."

Korn said he wasn't familiar with the federal court rulings upon which Traverse City is relying. He added that he and other Garfield Township officials are responding to the wishes of their constituents, who have said they don't want homeless people camping on public land in the township.

"That's a fairly common directive from our citizenry," Korn said.

As far as the township's legal spat with Goodwill Inn, Korn said the parties resolved their dispute amicably. He added that Buron is "a man of his word."

Asked whether the township ever considered revoking the Inn's special use permit, Korn said, "There was talk of it. I, personally, did not like the idea. . . We saw no reason to pursue revoking their permit."

Korn said he had no idea whether closing the homeless encampments near the Goodwill Inn forced some of them into the city. The township has several facilities that provide supportive and temporary housing for the homeless, he added.

Supervisors in Acme and Paradise townships also said their townships in recent years have shut down small homeless encampments — one near Whiteford Road in Acme Township and one on Perla Road in Paradise Township.

"All of our township properties are from dawn until dusk," said Acme Township Supervisor Doug White. "It doesn't matter who it is. I, myself, can't camp overnight."

Like Korn, White was unfamiliar with the federal court rulings cited by Trible-Laucht and said he had no idea whether requiring the Whiteford Road campers to move forced them into the city.

"We've had people going from here to, I don't know; they're going some place and they'll stay there for the night," he said.

In Paradise Township, Supervisor Rob Lajko said the DNR and the township's community police officer worked together this past spring to roust some homeless people who were camping on state land on Perla Road. "I know they left quite a mess there," he said.

Lajko also said he was unaware of the federal court rulings cited by city officials.

And whether the township's activities pushed the homeless campers into the city, Lajko said he didn't know, but he speculated that homeless people congregate in the city because they can find more services there.

"Fortunately, we're pretty rural out here," he said. "We don't have the amenities that they have in the city. On Perla Road, there are not a lot of amenities. It's a several-mile walk to the nearest store."

'THEY SHOULD BE SOMEWHERE ELSE'

Traverse City officials' willingness to tolerate homeless encampments like the Pines may allow them to claim the moral high ground, but the decision has come at a cost — both financial and in constituent dissatisfaction — because many people do not agree that the homeless should be allowed to take up residence on public property.

Some have asked what city officials would do if the homeless began camping at the Open Space or on Front Street in the heart of the downtown business district.

"I had a long conversation with a resident yesterday who lives in the Villages (adjacent to the Pines)," interim City Manager Nate Geinzer wrote in a June 27 email to city commissioners and other city officials. "You all have been working on this issue longer than I, but . . . I would say the main feeling from the resident I spoke with is that we are doing more to protect the homeless than those residents who pay taxes, etc. and they should be somewhere else, but not sure where."

In an effort to make the Pines safer and to consolidate the people who are camping there, the city moved all of the campers from the Women's Trail on the north side of 11th Street to the Men's Trail on the south side of the street. The city also banned alcohol in the Pines; added lighting; spent more than $15,000 to trim trees, making the area more accessible to police and firefighters; and responded to the vandalism of porta-potties in the Pines by allowing the vendors to remove them, forcing campers to answer nature's call in the woods and the wetlands surrounding nearby Kids Creek.

Police and firefighters also have been dispatched with regularity to douse campfires in the Pines and deal with other potential fire hazards. In June, city records show, police discovered that homeless residents at one Pines campsite had jerry-rigged an electrical hookup to the underground power box of a street light on 11th Street, which they were using to power several electrical devices.

Since the Oct. 15 opening of Safe Harbor, the city's homeless shelter on Wellington Street, the population of the Pines has shrunk from a high of 85 people this summer.

But in a grim reminder of the fragility of the lives of the people who, for various reasons, are still living there, a homeless man was found dead in his tent in the Pines on Oct. 26.

Police said they believe the man, who they have declined to identify, died from an accidental drug overdose. His body has been sent for an autopsy.

According to data maintained by the Northwest Michigan Coalition to End Homelessness, it was the third death of a Pines resident this year and the fifth death of a homeless person in Grand Traverse County in 2023.

Despite the approach of winter, some homeless residents refuse to go to Safe Harbor. They say that living in a congregate setting and sleeping side-by-side in bunk beds next to other broken men, many of whom have untreated addiction and mental-health conditions, is intolerable.

"I don't have the ability to deal with the people there," said Neal Kirby, 45, a homeless man who lives out of a car that he parks at Grand Traverse Crossing near Walmart. Kirby also has lived in the Pines, but said he moved out because of incidents of theft and violence.

"I've been living in and out of the Pines and it's gotten worse," he said.

A.J. Serrano, 37, a homeless man who said he is schizophrenic, moved into Safe Harbor after it opened, but had to leave after he said he tested positive for COVID-19. Asked whether he had been vaccinated for COVID, Serrano said no. "I'm skeptical, with everything that's going on," he said.

Safe Harbor allows people who test positive for COVID to stay one night, according to Operations Manager Brad Gerlach, but then they have to leave.

"We're not a healthcare facility," Gerlach said. "We offer them a tent and a sleeping bag, but that's cold comfort."

After being told that he had to leave Safe Harbor, Serrano pitched his tent inside a storage unit in a playground adjacent to the Ruth Park Apartments, across the street from Safe Harbor. Several other homeless men and women are camping along a fence behind Safe Harbor's parking lot.

Shivering in the cold, Serrano said he felt sick and miserable, but that he was wholly responsible for his predicament. He said he has been homeless in Traverse City since arriving here in 2019 from South Carolina. He believes his father lives here, but said he has been unable to locate him.

On the bright side, Serrano finally got some good news Tuesday. The Goodwill Inn notified him that a room had opened up and he moved in that day.

"It's not like I need a hug and someone to pity me," he said. "Nobody's responsible for what I've gone through."

Perhaps that's true, but Buron and Hannon said society has a moral responsibility to help take care of people who are homeless and living on the edge.

"These are human beings living in our community, and our best opportunity is to help them get housing in a safe place," Buron said. "There's human dignity in all this and human compassion and I hope that we don't get distracted from keeping them as a focal point."