Calif. Judge Blocks Raids on Homeless Camps

FRESNO, Calif. -- When city workers tore down her hillside encampment, Charlene Clay lost her asthma medicine, her sleeping bags and her only photos of her dead granddaughter.

The people living there weren't warned, she said. Within minutes, all that remained were the tire tracks of a dump truck, crumpled tents and a few stray belongings.

"All I can do now is close my eyes and remember what my granddaughter used to look like," said Clay, 48. "I couldn't get any medicine for a week."

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law are suing the city on the behalf of Clay and five others. They are asserting that police and sanitation workers violated the rights of the homeless for the past three years by defining their property as trash and bulldozing their encampments.

This week, they won a major victory.

U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger, calling Fresno's policy regarding homeless people's property "dishonest and demeaning," granted a preliminary injunction Wednesday ordering the city to stop seizing and destroying homeless people's property without warning while the civil rights lawsuit winds through the courts.

"Persons cannot be punished because of their status," the judge said. "They cannot be denied their constitutional rights because of their appearance, because they are impoverished, because they are squatters, because they are, in effect, voiceless."

City officials argued that the encampments are safety hazards, a nuisance and hotbeds of crime.

"We see evidence of drug use, we see human feces, we see other materials that we would be concerned about," Capt. Greg Garner testified. "If someone says, 'This is my property,' they're allowed to keep it."

But the judge said workers took people's belongings without notice and did not give them an opportunity to claim their things. He did not accept the argument of city attorney James Betts that Fresno lacks the space, money and manpower to log and store belongings seized in the "cleanups."

"This is very significant in protecting not just the rights of homeless people in Fresno, but nationally," said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. "It's the court saying, 'Yes, there are legal rights, constitutional rights that are at issue here, and this case needs to go forward.' "

Whether they squat in city parks or sleep in makeshift dwellings next to train tracks, homeless people in Fresno live in fear that their things -- many "critical to their survival" -- will be destroyed without warning, said Paul Alexander, who argued the case for the plaintiffs.