By Olivia Munoz
Associated Press
Friday, November 24, 2006

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.

"When they end up on the street, they still have their family photos, they still have their grandmother's wedding ring, and those are just as precious in a tent as they are anywhere else," he said.

Clay and her husband became homeless early this year when their apartment rent got too high. They couldn't afford the deposit on a cheaper place, so they set up in the encampment, where they could still be together, she said. After the raid, they moved their tent under a freeway. But that site was raided, too, she said.

"Wherever I go as a homeless person in the city of Fresno, the city of Fresno workers, accompanied by the Fresno Police Department, will come to take and destroy my personal possessions," Clay said.

Estimates of the number of homeless living on Fresno's streets vary, with advocates saying the number tops 8,000. According to the plaintiffs, three primary homeless shelters in Fresno have room for about 225 people.

Wanger's order blocks the city from raiding tent towns and destroying homeless people's belongings until the case is resolved.

On a recent afternoon at an encampment near the Fresno Rescue Mission, a drop-in center for the homeless, several people talked about the raids, saying their prized belongings were taken even when they tried to claim them.

Pamela Kincaid, 51, another of the homeless plaintiffs, said Wednesday that she lost all her possessions in a raid but felt vindicated by Wanger's decision.

"It feels good," she said. "I already knew what was right and had hope."